Figs & Thistles 2016-2017

Figs & Thistles

2016-2017

Literary Arts Journal of Presbyterian College

Figs and Thistles Literary and Arts Journal of Presbyterian College 2016-2017 50th Edition

Editors’ Note Dear reader,

What you hold in your hands is the 50th edition of Presbyterian College’s literary and arts journal, Figs and Thistles. Inside these pages are stories that will excite you and leave you thinking long after you have put them down, poems that will strike you with their clarity and wonder, essays that will open your mind to the world around you, and artwork that will surely leave an imprint on your imagination.

We put together this journal with one goal in mind: to bring you a collection of some incredible artistic achievements made by your Presbyterian College student family. We could not have done it without the help of some amazing people—our staff, our faculty advisor, Mr. Robert Stutts, and our printer, Mr. Bill Reagan of ProPrinters, and of course, our contributors. We hope that you enjoy each selection within this journal and will spread the love by joining or promoting Figs and Thistles around campus.

Sincerely, Allison Cooke and Anna Cooke

Staff

Allison Cooke, Editor Anna Cooke, Layout Editor Kaitlyn Guinyard Gracie Christenbury

Faculty Advisor Robert Stutts

ii

Table of Contents Editor’s Note

ii

Prose

Letters to the Basement King

Jessica Weaver

Pen’s Rose

J.T. Davis

Abstract Realism

Kaitlyn Guinyard

The Missing Person’s Case of Genesis McKinley

Sarah Gastright

It’ll Never Feel Like Home

Maggie Holly

Death Zone Dreaming

Will Baird

Christ and Her Pussycat

Olivia Aldridge

Teacher’s Pet

Emma Mathews

Angela’s Rift

Conner McCoy Poetry

La Última Sorpresa / The Last Surprise

Lee-Ann Salim

A Sequence of Haikus

Anna Cooke

Old Lady ASMR

Joshua Eargle

I Want to Have the Earth

Anna Cooke

Dear Mosquito

Joshua Eargle

Haiku

Anna Cooke

I Cannot Lie to the Moon

Allison Cooke iii

1 8 15

28 34 38 48 55 63

7 14 26 42 43 54 61

Artwork

Untitled

Regan Reed

St. Andrews Botanical Gardens, St. Andrews, Scotland

Kimberly Rhodes

Blackness Castle, Scotland

Kimberly Rhodes

Mystery in the Night

Ruth Boggs

Oban, Scotland

Kimberly Rhodes

Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, Scotland

Kimberly Rhodes

As Fast As Your Feet Can Take You

Regan Reed

Untitled

Maya Heard

St. Andrews Botanical Gardens, St. Andrews, Scotland

Kimberly Rhodes

Dunstaffnage, Scotland

Kimberly Rhodes

Waterfall of the World

Anna Cooke

St. Andrews University and Botanical Gardens, Scotland

Kimberly Rhodes

Untitled

Maya Heard Contributor’s Notes

Cover 6 14 27 33 37 41 42 47 53 54 60 62 71

iv

Letters to the Basement King

—Jessica Weaver Dear King of the Basement, I am writing you to inquire about a deer I saw hunted two days ago. I didn’t kill it myself, but I was in the hunting party. I had never been hunting before and I’m afraid I’ve lost all interest in the sport. Can you affirm that the aforementioned deer has reached your realm safely?

Sincerely, Perrie Dear Perrie, Do you know how many deer come down here every day? More than I would want to count, and even if I did look at all of them, I would have no way of knowing which one you’re asking about. I’ll say this, however—if it’s dead, I’m pretty sure it’s down here. I don’t think dead things go anywhere else.

Hoping to not see you soon (if you know what I mean), King of the Basement P.S. “King of the Basement?” What kind of name is that? And how did you even send this? You are confusing. Do not write again. Thank you.

Dear Basement King, I’m sorry I wrote your name wrong last time. From now on I’ll remember to put the “Basement” part before the “King” part.

If you can’t tell which deer is which, can you at least check and make sure that all of your deer are happy? It would help me feel better, if you care at all. If not, I might find my way to the great downstairs so I can nag you in person.

Looking to hear from you soon, Perrie Not-So-Dear Perrie, The deer are fine. It’s the people you have to worry about. Sometimes I have to curse the annoying ones with forgetfulness. Don’t come down here.

Please stop writing, Decidedly not the Basement King P.S. Seriously, how are you sending these letters? I don’t even have a mailing address.

Dear Decidedly not the Basement King, I stepped on a bug today. Will you go check on it for me? It’s small and black with shiny wings. I think it’s a beetle of some sort. It’s kind of hard to tell now. I panicked when it crawled across my bedroom floor, but now I feel kind of

1

sorry for it. Please respond soon; the guilt of its death on my shoulders is too way great a burden to bear.

With greatest admiration for you and your work, Guess who?

Dear Butt-Head, NO. I am NOT going into the bug room. Centuries upon centuries of creepycrawlies all locked into one room. NO. JUST. NO. There’s a special place in Hades for people like you, and it’s definitely in that room.

I’ll be waiting, The Basement King Dear Basement King, You sunk pretty low in your last letter, which I found rather impressive, considering you’re already in the basement. I will opt not to get on your level just yet, despite your gracious offer and my excitement at the thought of meeting you in person.

If we’re going to be pen pals, as our recent correspondences suggest we might be, it’s only fitting that we get to know each other. So, if you’ll forgive me for asking, what exactly is it that you do? You don’t seem very busy at all, if you have time to respond to my letters. Also, do you have any allergies? Are you avoiding the bug room for that specific reason? I once knew a girl who was allergic to ladybugs.

Forever yours, Butt-Head Dear arrogant mortal creature who will inevitably die someday (and probably soon), You have vexed me for the last time. Who are you? I will discover your identity, and I will smite you for the confusion and anger you have caused me. And believe me, it takes a lot to make me talk like my brothers. Those guys are jerks.

Note that I will ask no other question but the question I have been asking from the very first: how on earth are you sending these letters, you infuriating mortal?

Wishing you a painful death, Your Beloved Basement King P.S. Since you’ve asked, I will concede that I have a single allergy: daffodils.

Dear (unfathomably stupid) Basement King, All rivers flow to the river Styx. Isn’t that how you respond to my letters, even though you have no clue who I am or where your letters go once you send them? Paper placed in water by humans becomes useless, but my letters are recognized by the river spirits, as yours are, and remain intact until they find their

2

way to your shore. Now then, logic should imply that I’m no human, shouldn’t it? I may be infuriating, but I’m no mortal. I believe the term you should use is “goddess.”

Sincerely, Decidedly not an arrogant mortal creature who will inevitably die someday Dear Perrie, Let me tell you a funny story.

You know Thanatos, who walks the dying to the afterlife (or the basement, as you so affectionately call my realm)? He was in a forest next to a meadow the other day, helping a wood nymph in passing, when he heard voices in the meadow. There he saw several beautiful girls, and standing in the center of them was the most beautiful girl of all. She was instructing all of her friends to pick only daffodils and to pick them in great abundance. I wonder who that young woman could have been. Do you have any ideas, my friend?

I have nothing more to say, but that your plan has worked and my nose is running. May I humbly request that you cease sending them?

Warm regards, The Basement King Dear Basement King, I would apologize for sending the flowers, but to be frank you did deserve it, and I think you know that. I have another question for you. If there’s a specific chamber for bugs, I’m assuming other creatures are separated to a degree as well. So here is my question: where do the flowers go?

Wishing you good health, Perrie Dear Persephone, That’s your name. I know your name now. Thanatos asked around for me as he helped other creatures with their passing on, and now I know your name, and I believe you. Goddess of the flowers? Hardly a surprise.

The flowers float in over the river and take root wherever they land. Bush flowers and tree flowers group together to form shadows of the plants they came from. It’s truly a beautiful thing, even if it isn’t as beautiful as the flowers of the living world. It even seems sometimes that they ease the poor souls coming in.

I’ve noticed something about the flowers coming in these days: there’s a lot more of them, and there usually aren’t daffodils. I have my guesses as to where they’re coming from and who the ringleader of the operation is. Thank you.

Warm Regards, Hades, Lord of the Underworld

3

Dear Hades, I’m glad to hear you’re receiving the flowers well. I hope the daffodils are actually moveable. I’d hate for them to be rooted in places where you need to go.

What are people like in the Underworld? Do they remember their lives? Do they make friends and fall in love? Do they look young or old? Do you really make some of them forget? Also, do the animals act the same? Do they make good pets? I have a lot of questions about death, which is weird considering I’ll never have to worry about it.

In Friendship, Persephone Dear Persephone, The ghost daffodils are being picked and put in vases elsewhere in my realm.

I’m not sure exactly where, but I’m guessing it’s somewhere I usually don’t go.

Probably the bug room. I have nothing to do with the process. I’m just trying to stay out of the way until the whole mess gets cleared away and I can breathe like a normal god again.

The people here are quiet. They look like themselves without an age. They answer questions if you ask them a few times, but they never ask questions in return. They don’t acknowledge each other. It’s kind of lonely. The animals are very similar. They only graze and sleep.

You asked about pets? I have a dog, but I don’t think he’s the kind you meant.

Are you a dog person? It seems a lot of people are. This Heracles guy came in asking to borrow him for something, and that’s how I roped this guy who looks like Zeus (wait a minute, I think I know why) into picking daffodils and moving daffodils for me. The thing is, I think he was actually having a lot of fun. I’d tell you to have your girls invite him over for a day in the meadow, but I’m a terrible judge of character (at least of living characters—judging dead people is easy) and with my luck I’d probably be recommending an abusive womanizer, or someone who’s murdered his wife and kids. Now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn’t be letting him borrow my dog, but I think Cerebos can take care of himself if this guy turns out to be a nut. Anyway, for the time being I think I’ll just play it safe and let him pick flowers in the Underworld with me.

Faithfully trying not to assist the murder of your entire social group, Hades My Dear Basement King, Thanks for your foresight involving the potential murderer. My friends and I are not looking to get murdered anytime soon. I hope your dog makes it back safe, but, if you’ll forgive me for pointing this out, is there really anything that can be done to harm a dog from the Underworld? I mean, even if they find a way to kill him, won’t he just come back? Or am I looking at this all wrong?

4

Is the Underworld dark? Do you have anyone to talk to, aside from your dog?

Are you ever able to leave?

I wasn’t entirely honest with you in my first letter. I was not worried about the deer. I felt sorry for it, of course, but I was worried most about what would happen to someone living among the dead all the time. My methods of communication were kind of childish, but yours were too, and I had to persevere because I had to know what kind of person it takes to have such a lonely job.

Something has been nagging at my mind since your last letter. If a strange man can come to the Underworld to pick daffodils and borrow a dog, is there any reason why a goddess shouldn’t be able to visit as well? I want to see what the basement realm looks like, but mostly I want to meet you face to face and speak like the friends we have become.

Tomorrow night I will be standing in the meadow where Thanatos saw me. I do not know how to pass into the Underworld in a way that will allow me to leave again. I’m sure if anyone knows, you must. If you want to meet me as well, I will see you then.

Hoping to see you soon, Persephone Persephone, This is not a wise idea at all. It’s a strange thing for the living to walk among the dead, but for an immortal as removed from death as you, I fear it could prove to be a traumatic experience.

But I want to meet you, so I’m coming anyway.

See you, Hades My Dearest Perrie, I’m slipping this note under your door to tell you what is happening. My brother is on his way here with your mother. I hope you do not wake up to find this until the explosive part of this encounter is over.

None of this is your fault. I should have warned you not to eat anything before I ever brought you down here. The famine in the living world is not your fault. I know you blame yourself. I see your face when you watch Charon’s ferry come in. But it isn’t your fault. I don’t blame your mother, either. I blame myself for the foolish mistakes that could have been avoided.

I hope we can come to an agreement to make both sides happy. Should you stay here with me, your mother would be slighted and grieve even more, and the land of the living would continue to suffer. If you go back to stay, I fear our correspondence would be limited to letters in rivers again, if your mother would even allow that.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the next few hours. I hope compromise

5

is possible. Above all, I want whatever happens to be your choice. If somehow, that choice leads you to stay with me... Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But I do get lonely, and good friends are hard to come by.

Love, The Basement King

St. Andrews Botanical Gardens, St. Andrews, Scotland Photograph —Kimberly Rhodes

6

La Última Sorpresa

—Lee-Ann Salim La expresión de sorpresa, lágrimas de felicidad.

Olor a hierba cortada, la felicidad en el aire.

Calor del sol en nuestra piel, la fuerza de su abrazo.

El sonido de la risa, la felicidad en su voz.

El sabor dulce de la tristeza, la pena marcharme pronto.

The Last Surprise The expression of surprise, tears of joy.

The smell of fresh cut grass, the happiness in the air.

The heat of the sun on our skin, the strength of your embrace.

The sound of laughter, the happiness in your voice.

The sweet taste of sadness, it’s worth leaving so soon.

7

Pen’s Rose

—J.T. Davis There I stood, alone—a mere shadow, a silhouette—enshrouded by the morning mist creeping off the nearby pond. I looked around, feeling a presence, but even before I lifted my head, I knew it was nothing more than the ghost of a memory. Even the most adamant denier of the supernatural feels something unusual when near a graveyard. Also, given the small size of this graveyard, plus it natural seclusion, I was almost certain to be alone the entire day. I reverted my gaze back to the grave in front of me: Penelope Caldwell, 1976-2015. Perfectly centered over the grave stood a lone flower, a rose. Yet this impossibly beautiful flower was not placed there, as one generally does for those who have departed.

No, this rose was growing from the soil, a gift from the dead to the living.

As I looked upon the deep red rose, my thoughts flooded back to a time not so long ago. I felt a single tear brush past the corner of my mouth, bringing with it a saltiness I hadn’t tasted since I last stood in front of this grave. Her voice echoed in my head, words she had told me before she had passed. Words I would never forget.

I left my thoughts and returned to the reality in front of me. I briefly glanced around to assure myself that I was alone. Nothing but ghosts and spirits here.

Out of my pockets I pulled a couple of items: my phone, my keys, my wallet. I unlocked my phone and opened up the pictures. I had to scroll up a little, but I quickly found the one I was looking for: a page from a book. From my key ring, I removed a set of three identical miniature pink pocket knives, each no bigger than my pinky. I quickly double checked the instructions within the book on my phone. After triple checking, I opened one of the pocket knives, took a deep breath, and stabbed it into the ground, about a foot from the flower. I did the same with the other two, making a perfect triangle around the impossible flower. What a shame this flower would be lost to the world, in all of its geometric symmetry. But that is only a small price to pay.

From my pocket, I pulled out a much larger pocket knife (to be fair, it was normally sized, but after dealing with the other three, it felt like pickup truck next to a bumper car). I’d had this one for years, and it had come in handy on more than one occasion. I would definitely need to sharpen it once I got back home.

Using my pocket knife, I slowly used it to carve patterns in the ground—after again triple-checking my phone.

This part is the most tedious, and the one I’ve been practicing the most. I’ve practiced this enough that I don’t need to look at the diagram anymore to get it right, but I always do, just in case. This is too important to let pride make me careless. As I engraved the intricate designs, I was softly whispering different variations on “I’m coming for you, Pen, just like we promised.” I considered turning on some music while I worked, but decided against the idea because it

8

might be too distracting. If only people paid this much attention while driving, of accidents would be a thing of the past.

When I finally finished carving the pattern, the sun had already reached the apex of its trajectory through the sky. I pulled a granola bar out of my pocket and slowly munched on it, admiring my handiwork so far. I compared the design on the grave to the diagram on my phone and mentally categorized which strokes I would work on next. I didn’t have that many left, but these are some of the more delicate ones that require very careful attention. Once I finished my meager snack, I resumed my work.

Pen and I had been in school together since I was fourteen years old, and even though she was a year older than me, we were always in the same grade.

However, we didn’t get to know each other very well until college, when we both happened to go to the same school. From then on, we became best friends, and after a couple of years, a little more. It was junior year of college when we officially started dating.

It was about a month after we began dating when she told me her secret.

Her roommate was at home for the weekend, and we were playing scrabble in her room, when she decided to show me. When we later looked back on that moment, she told me how nervous she was. However, to me, it all seemed very casual.

She asked me if I wanted to know a secret and, of course, I said yes, why wouldn’t I? She walked over to her desk and pulled a piece of paper out of the printer. She grabbed a fountain pen and started writing some fancy looking symbols on the piece of paper. Once she set the pen down, she folded the paper into an origami crane. She set the piece of paper in my hands, and I watched as the paper crane (which looked tattooed because of the fountain pen ink) began flapping its wings and fluttering around the room. I looked at her with a mixture of horror and awe. “Are you seeing this?”

“Yep,” she replied.

“Did you do this?”

“Yep,” she casually responded.

“H-H-How?” I stammered.

“I’m a witch.”

I was caught between wanting to bolt out the door at that very instant and asking her to show me how to do it. But before I could make a decision, she spoke again.

“Let me show you something else,” Pen said. “Take my hand.”

I took her outstretched hand into mine, not exactly sure what to expect.

As I silently watched, she took a piece of burgundy ribbon and wrapped it around our hands. As she did so, she began to speak in a language I didn’t quite understand. I couldn’t even place what part of the world it originated from. As she

9

spoke, the ribbon began to glow. Slowly, the world around us began to melt and morph. The posters on the wall spiraled into windows. The bunk beds in the corner stretched and bent into an ancient lime green muscle car. The ceiling grew dark and small speckles of stars began shining through. The carpet beneath us became soft grass and brick sidewalks. As her room melded into this new scene, I recognized the place.

“This is where we had our first date!” I exclaimed. “That’s my car, that’s the restaurant, it’s all just as I remember it!”

She looked at me, beaming, glad that I had gotten it. “I thought you might appreciate this.”

I watched as a couple stepped out of the car (not just a couple, but Pen and me). They seemed to be unaware of us as they walked inside the restaurant. I began to follow them, but the ribbon was still wrapped around our hands, and Pen held me back for a moment.

“Do you want to watch this or go back to reality?” Pen asked of me.

“Can we interact with this place anyway?” I questioned.

“Not really. About all we can do is watch.”

“Then let’s head back.”

She again began speaking in that bizarre language, and the transformations reversed. The windows returned to being posters, the car became a bunk bed, and the carpet and ceiling returned to their normal states.

“That was incredible!” I exclaimed. “How long have you been able to do this?”

“My dad started showing me how to perform magic like that since I was twelve,” she replied softly.

From what I knew of her dad, he was a no nonsense former marine. He didn’t strike me as the type to quietly entertain the notion that magic existed. “Really?”

“Believe it or not, it’s true,” she stated simply. “It’s a skill that’s been passed down through my family for generations.”

“Can anyone learn it?” I asked.

“It’s just like any skill. It comes more naturally to some people than to others, but anyone can learn.”

“Oh, kind of like learning a new instrument?” I asked.

“Yeah, kind of like that.”

“One thing I don’t get,” (Not true, there were a lot of things I didn’t get about this, but one was pressing above all), “since this stuff is so awesome, why don’t I see it more in my day-to-day life? Why isn’t this something taught in schools?”

“Well, if you remember what you were taught in school, witches and others who practiced magic were persecuted,” she said. I started to interject, but she continued on, saying “Yes, you were lead to believe that magic doesn’t really exist, but that’s because magic users have found that keeping a low profile is the best way to not be punished and to live a healthy life.”

“So how does all this work?” I inquired.

10

“That’s simple enough. There are spirits and ghosts living in the air around us, invisible forces we’ll never see. Magic is merely a system of symbols and actions and words that have been found to make them respond how we wish them to.”

“So what you drew on that paper crane were just instructions for some demon?”

She laughed at that, a sound like wind chimes tinkling. I loved it when she laughed. “More or less. Now, magic doesn’t always work perfectly. The spirits occasionally decide to not play along or to mess things up all together.”

“So we could have been stuck in our memory?” I asked, frightened.

“Theoretically, yes. But it rarely happens.”

We married a year after we graduated. By that time, she had taught me a little magic (including the paper crane trick). Over the following few years, she continued to teach me. I was all right at it, but it never came as naturally to me as it did to Pen. We had a steady life. Pen became an elementary school teacher, I worked as a project supervisor at the local factory. We both decided we didn’t want kids and lived happily for a long time. However, in May of 2015, a bad turn of events overcame Pen. She was teaching class, when out of nowhere she fainted.

Just passed out in front of thirty-, fourty-some third graders. Luckily the nearby teacher heard pretty quickly the commotion caused by the frightened children and came over. She was rushed to the hospital, where they ran a series of tests.

I came to the hospital as soon as I could to be with Pen. When the doctors let me in to see her, she looked at me with a healthy smile. But I could see that behind that smile was a tinge of sadness.

“What is it?”

“The doctors don’t know yet.”

“Do you?” I asked.

She hesitated for a moment, and then softly nodded.

“What is it?”

“I think its blood cancer.”

We looked at each other for a long while, neither saying anything. We didn’t have to, we’d known each other so long, that this conversation was silent.

As I looked into the eyes of my wife, I saw a fear I’d never seen before. This girl who can make spirits bend to her will, was afraid of the one spirit she could not control.

Death.

She stayed in the hospital until her death, only three months later. I visited her every day and was there, next to her, when the grim reaper carried her away.

We tried different methods of healing her, from medicine to magic, but all to little avail. A week before she passed, she handed me a folded sheet of paper.

“What is this?” I asked.

11

“You’ll know. Don’t open it until after I die,” Pen said, smiling weakly. The cancer was causing her to be in constant pain. We both knew her time was limited, and I secretly wished that she would go ahead and pass on, so that she ceased suffering so.

But then she laughed, as strong as she ever did. Again sounded like tinkling wind chimes.

I placed the paper on my dresser. The week after she passed was filled with mourning, family, and friends. We had a short memorial service, then had her body buried in a small secluded graveyard near a pond.

Once I finished the carvings, I pulled a worn, folded piece of paper out of my pocket, I opened it up, and smiled.

It read: Alex, You are the love of my life. I constantly think of you as I lay here, because when I do, the pain eases, even if minutely, even if momentarily. And every time I look into your eyes, I am reminded that you love me just as much as I love you.

As I die, I am making preparations. There is a book that we own, that is tucked away with other books we wish not to show to the public. This one has a forest green cover with silver lettering (it’s the only book we own that has a green cover and silver lettering in fact). In it is a piece of magic that even I have not tried to use, for there has never been the right opportunity. However, once I die, it will be the right opportunity. Learn the spell, take your time. I can wait. I will let you know when I am ready. Just look for a rose unlike any other.

With centuries of love, Pen I set the piece of paper back down and again looked at the rose. This was certainly no ordinary rose. It was a rose that only a witch could create. For one thing, it was not growing on a bush, but rather as if it were some freestanding flower. The stem was normal enough: leaves and thorns like you would find on any normal rose. The main difference came from the flower itself, the shape of the petals: they formed a perfect (and perfectly real) Penrose triangle. Looking at it boggled my mind. But I knew that was what she meant by a rose unlike any other.

And then I stared at the patterns and runes that I had carved, sprawling out from the rose in an ornate pattern. From my wallet, I pulled out three different pictures of Pen from over the years. I leaned each one against the miniature pocket knives still protruding from the ground, positioning the pictures so that they all faced the rose.

Finally, I pulled a lighter out of my pocket and lit the note on fire. I held it over

12

the rose until the flames forced me to drop it. As the paper fell through the center the Penrose triangle, the lines I carved caught fire, spreading from the rose to the very edges of the design. The flames slowly licked at the pictures, curling their edges, then engulfing them. As I watched, the pocket knives began to glow an unnatural color. From each of them, a beam of light shot out towards the rose, enveloping it in that same unnatural glow.

And then it all stopped. The flames disappeared, not even leaving behind scorch marks to show for it. The knives and the rose stopped glowing. There were piles of ashes where the pictures and the note had been consumed in the fire, but other than that, no evidence remained of what I just witnessed. Just an ornate design with that impossible rose standing proudly in the center.

I don’t know if this was part of the spell, or if the spirits just decided to not bend to my will today. I stood there for a couple minutes as a weight in my stomach started to form. All at once, a huge weight came upon my shoulders, and I sank to the ground, crying. I cried like I hadn’t since I watched the light drain from Pen’s eyes, the vitality slip from her body, the life float away from her fingertips. I wept, leaning over the grave, my tears splashing down onto the rose. I knew not if I would ever get another chance to perform the ritual.

I lay beside the grave for hours, mourning for Pen for the second time. But this time, I was alone, my friends and family weren’t here to console me this time.

And so I lay there, weeping and morning.

I must have wept myself to sleep at some point, because the next thing I know, it’s morning. The mist is back, and the morning birds are improvising their song for the early risers. It was still pretty dark outside (the sun had barely begun to rise), but there was just enough light to see.

And to see that the rose was missing.

I scrambled to my feet and looked at the grave. It looked just as it had last night, but where the rose had been, there was now a series of footprints. I followed the foot prints, which led all the way to where I had parked my car.

Then behind me, I heard a laugh that sounded like wind chimes tinkling.

13

A Sequence of Haikus

—Anna Cooke Post cards on the wall, To help me remember or— To let others know?

You fall asleep to A beautiful blur of Memories and sheets.

A place of places My walls hold my memories And also hold me.

Blackness Castle, Scotland Photograph —Kimberly Rhodes 14

Abstract Realism

—Kaitlyn Guinyard Formal wear made Franky’s skin crawl, collected sweat beneath his pits by the ounce, and always managed to remain a few inches shy of reaching his ankles.

This suit’s better suited for the Devil, Franky thought, but he was certain Satan was currently scrutinizing his work rather than reclaiming clothes. The satanic individual cut a glance at Franky, borderline questioning, and he answered with an awkward smile until the look vanished. Franky gulped, fixing the tie around his neck.

The wait was pure torture.

Franky licked his lips before asking, “W-well, Mr. Edmund? What do you think?” Mr. Edmund, a lanky fellow with narrow wrists and bony cheeks, fixed his posture. A mist of regality seemed to flow from the pores of his skin, forcing its way through the shoots of Franky’s nostrils, into his mind, and clouding any iota of confidence he had left. He shrunk under the attention, failing to lock eyes with the empty ones of Mr. Edmund.

“Your splatters are quite…eclectic, Mr. Fritz,” he said, referring to the painting with faint exasperation. The artist’s brow pinched, instantly aware of the meaning behind Mr. Edmund’s comment. Today marked the twelfth consecutive time that an art dealer was far from impressed with his work, mainly because each canvas presented to him was swathed in paint splatters. Reds and pinks for when his frustration burst forth, and blues and purples for the depressed genius within him caged by reality. However, Franky’s newest piece was a plethora of emerald, lime, and forest green; his financial stance was suffering, more than usual, and the anxious energy filling him came forth in the form of the messy green creation.

Franky wondered how others couldn’t see it. His life of unity was broken, as if a once bold color was split into three.

“It’s supposed to represent the, um…th-the shattered pieces of someone’s life,” he stuttered, suddenly sensitive to the heat pluming inside his jacket. The walls of his apartment seemed to be closing in, yet Mr. Edmund was spared of the discomfort. A shield, flaky, resolute, and grim, protected him from the translucent paranoia.

Mr. Edmund adjusted his glasses. “‘Supposed to’? ‘Supposed’ is a loose and flimsy term, Mr. Fritz.” His dark gaze narrowed. “I expect my clients to have nothing but the utmost pride and confidence in their work. So, how come I feel as if you’re making up excuses for it?” His disappointment began to taint the air.

Franky held his breath, feeling that pitiful speck of hope in his gut extinguish.

Suddenly, Mr. Edmund turned his eyes down the hall, where a lone door was located at the end. Dried fingerprints were swathed about the knob, all conjured up on somber-colored paint. Franky had left a majority of the lights off, intending to enshroud his room in shadows and draw attention away from it, yet the art

15

dealer spotted it effortlessly.

“Hiding your studio from public eyes, Mr. Fritz?” the art dealer cooed, a mocking grin pulling at the wrinkles of his skin. “Don’t be shy now. If you have more for me to see, then put it on display.”

Franky’s sweat output doubled when Mr. Edmund began to approach the room.

“M-Mr. Edmund? There’s no need to go back there,” he called out. The dealer ignored his plea but he grimaced at how closely Franky tailed him. Mr. Edmund cupped the doorknob. “Mr. Edmund!” Franky’s voice was now shrill, trembling.

Again, his protests went unheeded and the art dealer entered, only two steps past the doorframe. Once inside, he froze in place and his brow arched, an emotion besides contempt finally gracing his features.

“Why, Mr. Fritz,” he said, a chuckle rumbling in his bones. “Perhaps you should have showed me this instead?” Franky’s fists quivered within his pants pockets, struggling to remain calm as Satan’s dark regality began to infect his safe haven.

The bedroom had a standard layout. There was a twin-sized bed with black sheets, a desk—bare of any textbooks or pens but loaded with sketchpads, watercolor tubes, paintbrush sets, and charcoal—and a small, faux leather sofa.

It was the walls that harbored Franky’s secret obsession.

Lips, all of the same pair, were delicately painted onto canvases of varying dimensions. This was not splatter art; this was the artist’s betrayal of abstract art, his only exception for realism. Even in that moment, an odd mixture of shame and heat bubbled in his core as those familiar lips puckered at him from all angles. It was so believable, the organic colors and shading brought his work to life and provoked tingles along his skin, as if those lips were kissing him from head to toe.

Mr. Edmund’s fingertips ghosted centimeters over the lips, almost taunting Franky. “This attention to detail is admirable, Mr. Fritz.” Skepticism lurked beneath his tone. “How could you go around strutting with that splatter fiasco, when you have perfectly good pieces in here?”

“They’re not for sale,” Franky said. He became snippy, the art dealer could tell, and amusement filled him upon the realization. Giggling behind a narrow wrist, he patted Franky’s shoulder as he slipped out of the room.

“Then make another that you’d be willing to sell,” he said. Before he exited, Mr. Edmund shot a look over his shoulder, something mischievous and gut-squirming emitting from it. “Maybe then, we could do business.”

He closed the door.

Peach, reds, and pinks dirtied Franky’s clothes and face. Frustration started as a kindling fire when he began painting around 9:00 a.m. However, the clock beside his bed now read 7:30 p.m. and several unfinished lips laid scattered about the floor. By this point, the artist’s frustration was a raging inferno, pushing against the bars of self-restraint.

16

He nibbled at the skin of his lips, a pesky habit of his. “I can’t do this,” he whispered.

Franky was right, he couldn’t do this. Not without his source of inspiration, not without his model. If only she had a tad more patience and understood the man’s passion. If she had stayed and retained faith in the relationship, this could be possible.

Paintbrushes fell to his boots. “I can’t do this! Fuck!” Franky lashed out at the canvas before him, watching as it flew across the room and collided into the wall.

The thud was empty, unsatisfying, and did nothing but fan the urgent anger within him. It blistered beneath his skin, begging to be released.

Any other day, he’d dismiss the feeling and drown himself in self-pity for the rest of the night, but this was a new breed of fury. It pulsed with a separate heartbeat, out of sync with his own, and pulled away from the clasps of his will, desperate for freedom. It was somewhat frightening but, then again, so was his situation. Franky needed to sell a piece to Mr. Edmund or else he would soon live in the streets. He knew no one would take him in. Not his parents, not his aunts or uncles, and not—especially not—his ex-girlfriend.

Franky latched onto the fury, reclaimed his brushes, retrieved a fresh canvas, and channeled it into his work. However, the pulse roared in disapproval and caused him to hesitate.

No, he thought, I’ll do this my way. He would make Mr. Edmund recognize his vision for art, no matter what.

He gathered the brushes with wide bristles and began to splatter.

Franky’s perception of time faded as the image slowly took shape. He painted until his joints ached and his legs grew weak, only to paint some more. Finally, his muscles admitted defeat and he flopped onto his haunches, the wooden floor warmed by sunlight peeking through midnight curtains. A rush of fatigue shot through Franky, the world doubled, and he fell into a forceful slumber.

“Franky…” a voiced spilled over Franky, jostling him from his unconscious state. His name was spoken with a familiar tenderness that had the tendency to dip with sensuality. As the artist blinked the blurriness from his vision, a humanoid blob began to fade into existence. It was hovering over him and he assumed the lap supporting his head belonged to the mysterious entity.

The presence gently shook his shoulder. “Franky, are you okay? Can you hear me, Love?”

There was no denying it now. Franky only knew of one individual who had enough confidence to use such a corny pet name—her. Adrenaline shot through his spine, forcing him to sit up rigidly, and the moisture evaporated from his lips as they flapped away, struggling to form a coherent sentence.

The frazzled man began to babble, “D-Delilah? You came back, I can’t believe it! I missed you so much. I’m so, so sorry! We can start over…” Suddenly, blood

17

rushed to Franky’s head as he took in the woman’s apparel.

Specifically, her blatant nudity.

He pulled off his shirt with shaky hands and shoved it over her head as he yelled, “Jesus, Delilah! W-where’d your clothes go?!” Delilah giggled and he gave pause. His ex-girlfriend never giggled; rather, she chuckled, low and sultry yet tinged with a fondness reserved for few people in her life. But now, her laughter was unguarded and practically given to him like toys at a charity event.

She cupped his face, her fingers rough and cooler than he remembered.

“What’s wrong, Franky? You’ve seen me naked a million times already.”

“Well, yeah, but still—” “Looks like you had a long night,” she interrupted with wide, concerned eyes.

“Lie down. I’ll join you after making us something to eat.” Before he could deny the offer, he was already approaching his twin-sized bed, kicking off his boots in the process, and melting into the mattress. Franky whispered a “thank you,” though he doubted she heard in time.

The artist’s pupils were the only part of his body motivated enough to move, so he did a quick scan of the room. It seemed as if a tornado visited last night. Paint smeared the floor; luckily, the eclectic lips went untouched and their realistic perfection could continue to live on in glory. An easel laid toppled over. Franky assumed he must have knocked it down during his previous fit. However, another thought struck him.

The painting he worked all night on, his only hope for paying rent—it was gone.

He jumped to his feet, fatigue long forgotten, and literally flipped all of the furniture in search of the painting. Yet, much to Franky’s growing despair, it was nowhere to be seen.

The heels of his palms dug into his eyes, trying to suppress the heat of tears building behind them.

When Delilah had walked in on Franky having a semi-breakdown, she was instantly at his side and had caressed his hair while whispering sweet nothings. It had been a welcoming change. Usually, she would sit about six inches away, an awkward expression on her face, and rub the artist’s bicep until the tears dried.

She was not one for crying.

Now, some of Franky’s devastation had settled, his cheeks stiff with dried tear trails and his lips pulled taught, refusing to blubber any further. The expression almost morphed into a grimace, as he detested his innate weakness. However, with Delilah’s fingers rubbing soothing circles on his back, Franky swallowed back his shame and indulged in the rare comfort. Who knows, he thought, I’ll probably never get this again. Delilah hates tears. I don’t know what’s changed but…God, I won’t complain.

Delilah’s hands migrated to Franky’s jaw, guiding the man to lock eyes with her.

He could detect concern blossoming across her features. “Love, you don’t have

18

to hide your tears from me. You’re strong in your own way,” she said. In an instant, Franky’s lips parted, yet he failed to utter a single word, his vocal cords iced over with shock. Delilah cracked a smile, slightly amused by her lover’s reaction. “No, I’m not a mind reader.” Her palm rested over his heart. “I just know you...We’re connected, in a way.”

It took Franky a moment or two before his suspicion vanished. Once it did, the artist smiled in gratitude, the sentiment so rarely felt, so rarely provoked by Delilah, that his insides ached with the return of an old friend. “Thank you,” he whispered.

The woman rocked back, reaching behind her to grab a small plate of shrimp alfredo, and presented it to Franky with a charming grin. “You can thank me by eating what I made you,” she said. Franky accepted the deal with gusto.

For the briefest second, he wondered when Delilah found out that shrimp alfredo was his favorite, as she never cooked before and used to have no interests in his tastes. However, once the perfectly boiled pasta and creamy sauce settled on his tongue, the questions blurred from existence.

It was delicious.

Afterwards, the artist had excused himself from the apartment, telling Delilah that he needed some fresh air, and now found himself strolling past a café.

Crazy Café was a decent joint; their service was quick and efficient but the overall quality of their coffee could stand some improvement. Franky entered, almost smiling when the bell above him jingled and brought back memories. He came to this establishment so often that the employees knew him by face and name. A waitress slowed to a stop in front of him, taking advantage of the calm before the daily lunch rush. She was middle-aged, at least a decade older, but her jovial smile and smooth skin could be deceiving.

“Franky, hon! You’re early. Came to sweep this little damsel in distress off her aching feet?” she teased with a slap to his shoulder.

“Not today, Deborah. Just need the usual kick,” Franky said. Deborah shooed him in the direction of a small table. It was located in the back corner of the café, where one could enjoy people-watching through the window.

“Enough said, hon. I already know what you need. Large mocha latte with whipped cream on top and a drizzle of caramel.”

“My hero,” the artist sighed in gratitude before seating himself. Five minutes later, Deborah arrived with his order. He held the steaming cup in both hands, allowing it to heat his palms, and gradually slipped into deep thought. He could vaguely hear Deborah’s heels clacking away in the background, clearly a violation of her job’s dress code, but it became nothing but white noise.

I don’t get it, Franky thought, Delilah broke up with me last week. So why did she show up in my apartment? Heat prickled his face as her smooth, bare skin floated to the forefront of his mind. And naked too! God, she’s trying to kill me, I

19

just know it! Is this some sick joke? Fear began to bubble in his gut and cold sweat ran down the back of his neck.

A random customer passed by, accidentally knocking his hip into Franky’s table. Both parties jolted and threw out pardons with sheepish smiles. Franky wished the man a lovely day, his cheeks twitching with embarrassment and exhaustion.

His mind pulled him back in.

Please, God, don’t let it be a joke! Especially not now! She…she’s so different. More understanding and gentle and calm…Franky could feel a smile weed through the panic, already longing to be by Delilah’s side once more.

Yet, hesitation, indomitable doubt, sprung from within and reminded him that something seemed off about this Delilah. Her shift in personality was far too abrupt, far too significant, and far too convenient.

He could make out Deborah’s voice travelling from the front counter, her bellowing laughter and shoulder slaps bouncing off the walls of the café. She seemed to carry little burden upon her shoulders, something that Franky envied from time to time.

Yet, the artist couldn’t deny how beneficial his situation became with Delilah’s return. With his lover back in the picture, he could once again draw upon her for inspiration and paint a pair of lips for Mr. Edmund. No longer would he face the threat of eviction or spend the rest of his days reaching out to the empty half of his bed. The timing was perfect—too perfect.

Franky inhaled the aroma wafting from his coffee, willing his thoughts to ease into a numb, peaceful state. He came to this café to relax, rather than drive his sanity into oblivion. He resorted to watching pedestrians pass by and slowly fell into a world of make-believe.

Human forms swirled and contorted, wringing out each drop of corruption, deceit, selfishness, and formed oblong bodies with opaque skins. Sharp eyes were smoothed back, effortlessly molding beneath the palms of his psyche, the creative flow of his mercy. Oranges kissed by the sun, pale blues extracted from the dew of morning rain, and the grim richness of fossilized lava splattered the shapes. The primal vitality of nature, of life, untouched by man’s clutches, honored the blobs with its presence and embraced their monochromatic skins as a sign of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Sidewalks peeled from the earth and wrapped about the shapes in doublehelixes, twirling to the gray horizons like a stairway to the solemn unknown.

Franky’s creativity took hold of the reigns now and left his current worries in the dust. These visions, these moments of abandonment, this rebellion against the physics of reality—this was what lead to Franky’s love for abstract art.

Suddenly, his nirvana wavered when two shapes, intertwined more tightly than welded steel, slinked by with an affectionate sway. The blobs shifted back to humans, sidewalks fell victim to gravity, and colors returned to natural order.

20

Something appeared familiar about these two individuals and evoked waves of nausea in his stomach. Confused, Franky squinted, attempting to recognize their faces— “Fuck…fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he chanted beneath his breath. He watched in horror as a couple entered the shop, not yet aware of his presence, and approached the front counter. A tall, slim man dressed in a black turtleneck and brown khakis had his arm slung around the shoulders of a beautiful brunette.

He whispered something in her ear, causing the woman to blush before playfully smacking his chest. She then snuggled into his side, staring up at the menu.

It was Delilah and her new boyfriend, Antonio.

Questions immediately bounced about in Franky’s head.

Why was Delilah with Antonio? Why wasn’t she back at the apartment? Did this mean that she didn’t want to reconcile?

His mind was spinning, fearing that his breakfast would soon make an appearance.

Unfortunately, the questions tripled when a series of banging erupted next to him. He jumped in his seat, nearly falling off, before glaring at the asshole who thought it’d be hilarious to pound on the window. However, Franky’s glare melted away in the face of pure, unfiltered shock.

It was Delilah, again, wearing nothing but his shirt. Her hair was disheveled and wild, dirt and tears stained her pale face, and her fists reddened in pain as she continued to beat the glass. Her screams were slightly muffled but the artist knew she was yelling his name repeatedly. The level of distress infecting her voice was heart-breaking, provoking from within him a protective instinct that only lovers could have for each other. He rushed for the exit, all forms of logic blurring into one single desire—comfort Delilah.

“Franky?” a female voice called out. Franky’s hand rested on the door, trembling, dying to push it open and leave the vicinity. Instead, he reeled in enough of his panic to turn around. Seeing a second Delilah approach on cautious feet was mind boggling. He swayed as a round of vertigo crashed over him; this could not be possible.

“D-Delilah?” He had said her name in questioning, honestly unsure whether this woman was a decoy or if the one outside was a pathetic figment of his imagination. The Delilah standing before Franky reared back her shoulders, a clear show of defiance, before adopting a more steely tone.

“You never answered my calls,” she said. For a fleeting moment, his hope spiked. “I need to come over and get the rest of my things.” The hope fizzled out just as quickly. The sight of Antonio wrapping a supportive arm around her waist only deepened the wound in Franky’s chest. Before he could reply, the door beneath his hand moved and the bell jingled.

“Are you okay?!” The yelling belonged to the first Delilah, the loving, caring, and understanding Delilah. She latched onto Franky and placed a gentle hand

21

over his heart. Upon feeling the galloping beat in his chest, she kissed the side of his neck, and whispered a hushed apology. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I came as soon as I could. I could feel your distress and ran all the way over here…” For the shortest instant, the artist’s heart warmed with love, almost blinding him from the bizarre situation at hand. However, he didn’t allow himself to fall captive to the feeling and slowly pried her touch away. Hurt crossed her visage, but much to Franky’s relief, understanding was peeking through the cracks.

He gave the heartless Delilah and Antonio a sideways glance, unable to muster up enough courage to face them fully. “You can come by and get them whenever you want, Delilah,” he said. At first, she seemed pleased with Franky’s compliance, but a moment later, distaste returned to her features as she scrutinized the Delilah standing next to him.

“And who is this? Wow…it’s kinda sad.” Cold Delilah titled her head and narrowed her eyes, examining the gentle twin as if she was a painting. “I mean, she looks a lot like me…Can’t you learn to move on, Franky?” Franky couldn’t find a reasonable reply, as his confusion was born anew. The two women were obviously doppelgangers, exact replicas, yet cold Delilah failed to connect the dots. She was far too calm after staring into her own face without the assistance of a mirror.

Deborah’s clacking heels shattered the tension. “Alright, alright, break it up!

I know I missed my soap operas this morning, but you four are disturbing the shop!” She swatted a towel between Franky and cold Delilah, forcing her to take a few steps back into the arms of Antonio.

“We were just leaving, Deborah,” the artist said while grabbing gentle Delilah by the elbow, urging her to follow him out of the café. At first, she protested. A fire burned in her gut as she stared down her twin, who stared right back, and her tongue itched to deliver punishment. However, the urge was extinguished when Franky whispered in her ear pleadingly, “We need to go, Love.”

It was the pet name. Gentle Delilah deflated, shot Antonio and her copy one last withering scowl, before retreating with her lover.

Her bare feet slapped dully against the cement, like a canvas colliding with drywall.

“You know I need answers, Delilah…” Franky sighed for the third time. He ran a damp towel across her cheek, cleaning the area of tear trails and mud.

He and the woman sat on his mattress, legs crossed and posture hunched with exhaustion.

The room remained a mess and Franky’s painting had yet to be found.

However, by this point, paying rent was not at the forefront of his thoughts.

“I know,” Delilah replied. Her green eyes were glistening with unshed tears and every flicker of light within those endless pools chipped away at the man’s heart.

His gut was wrenching, curling into itself, screaming at him to avoid this

22

conversation. It was so easy; he could simply forget the whole café event and accept this new Delilah with open arms. Old Delilah would gather her things and exit his life forever, never to return.

And yet, circumstances were far more complex than that, and there was no way he could fool himself into believing otherwise.

“Delilah…” Franky pushed through the pain stabbing his diaphragm. “How can there be two of you? Which one is real? Are you real or—” A lump became lodged in his throat, unable to utter the dreaded words. Delilah locked her hands behind his neck and guided his lips to hers for a brief kiss. Upon parting, she held him close, so close that his front flushed against hers. She lowered one hand to lift the hem of her shirt, Franky’s shirt, to expose the junction between her left hip and thigh. There was tiny signature in black ink.

Franky’s mouth grew as dry as cotton.

“That’s your signature,” Delilah whispered while tracing the loops. “Your passion was beautiful, Franky. You worked so hard, you always do.” She locked eyes with him, vulnerability wavering her voice and sending a trimmer through her bottom lip. “And you worked so hard making me.”

Franky’s forehead automatically tilted forward and pressed against hers.

A ragged sob ripped from his throat as realization slowly sunk in. “You’re my painting,” he muttered.

Delilah’s giggle was watery yet still so open and giving. It almost drove the artist mad with heartache. “That’s right. I’m just…paint. Splatters of paint on a canvas. I’m so…so sorry, Franky. I wish I could be real, just for you.”

“We can still make it work,” he begged. “We don’t have to tell anyone! We can move to a new town and get you a new name! We can be happy!”

“And with what money, Franky?” Delilah’s smile was faux and miserable.

Franky pressed on desperately. “I-I’ll work a bunch of odd jobs! I’ll save up and then we can get out of here!”

Delilah twirled a lock of her lover’s dark hair and gained a far-away, resigned look in her eyes. “You could make your life easier and just sell me,” she said. The offer jammed several daggers through Franky’s heart. His form crumbled further into her and his embrace tightened.

“No way in hell I’m doing that!” he yelled.

“You’ll be living on the streets if you don’t.”

“I don’t care!”

“Call Mr. Edmund, Franky.”

“I said no!”

“Franky…Franky, look at me, Love,” Delilah ordered. At first, he didn’t budge, but eventually he pulled away from the crook of her neck and gave his full attention. She cupped Franky’s face, the rough canvas material of her fingers now painfully easy to recognize. “You make me feel so special and so loved. I can see it whenever you look at me…what you see in me is amazing. But…that’s

23

not what everyone else sees.”

The artist squinted, not catching onto Delilah’s words. “But…Delilah, you’re perfect. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees that.” Unfortunately, his honesty did little to lift her spirits, as the sorrow in her countenance became more pronounced.

“You might see me as your lover, but to everyone else, I’m something else. The real Delilah only saw a woman who happened to look a lot like her, not the twin that you see in front of you. Why do you think no one said anything?” Franky’s eyes fluttered closed, dejection roaring in his veins. Even now, with his work emerging from the canvas and interacting with the world, others still failed to see what he saw in his art. “And Mr. Edmund…I’m sure he’ll see me as a pair of splattered lips.”

Franky’s head began to shake, refusing to accept her words. “It doesn’t matter.

I don’t care if other people think I’m crazy. S-so what if they see me living with a painting? Nothing else matters but us.”

“Oh, Love…” He felt four kisses, one for each cheek, his forehead, and then his lips. “You know I can’t let you live like that. I can’t afford to have you throw away your life over me.” He couldn’t find the strength to counter; it took all of his will power not to launch into another fit and destroy the lip paintings covering his walls. At one point in his life, those numerous lips were his pride and joy. Now, they taunted him and bombarded his fragile soul from all angles. The assault was merciless.

Delilah tilted Franky’s chin up until he faced her. “All you have to do is change your perception of me. Realize and accept that I’m nothing more than a painting and it’ll be all over.”

She didn’t give him a chance to react.

In the span of a second, Delilah reached over to a paint brush resting in a jar of dirtied water. She smeared a thick stream down her arm and cringed in pain when her skin pruned up. The area paled in color until it peeled off as soggy paper, not a drop nor speck of blood in sight. Her stare was resolute.

“I’m a painting, Franky…”

Franky carefully cradled her arm. Yes, he thought, this always happened to my canvases when I applied too much water. It was the consequence of buying such cheap material, but his finances warranted the sacrifice.

The arm in his hands began to harden. Flesh lost its color and joints receded into ninety degree angles. The weight on the other side of his bed lightened until a single, gorgeous painting fell to the sheets. Franky picked it up with quivering hands and traced a finger along his signature.

“Amazing work, Mr. Fritz,” Mr. Edmund praised as he circled Franky’s apartment. The painting was propped up on an easel placed in the middle of his living room. However, the piece did not stand alone. The walls of his room were

24

now barren, as each pair of lips he ever painted were neatly placed throughout the room. Delilah, Franky’s precious, abstract Delilah, sat in the center of a circle of realism. By no means did the artist intend this arrangement to be symbolic but he did intend it to be bitterly ironic. He hoped, with a level of desperation he never tasted until now, that Mr. Edmund would feel his anguish, the loneliness seeping in through the pores of his soul.

After taking a final lap, the art dealer retracted a generous wad of cash from within his suit and handed it over to his client. Franky accepted the money silently, his movements robotic and lifeless. He didn’t bother dressing up. Instead, he was adorned by a red and black striped shirt and baggy sweatpants. His hair was an odd concoction of bedhead and a cowlick, evidence that he skipped combing it that morning.

“Thanks,” he said lowly. Mr. Edmund paused to analyze the artist’s demeanor.

He was no social butterfly but even he could notice an extreme shift in behavior.

However, he also cared little about Franky’s well-being. His prize was already within his grasp.

Mr. Edmund gingerly stacked the canvases, the abstract painting on top, before tossing out one last farewell. “It was pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Fritz.

You’ll be sure to see your collection on opening night of my exhibit. I’m sure I’ll see you there?”

Franky pinned him with a disdainful glare.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said.

The craters of Mr. Edmund’s cheeks deepened with his smile.

“Excellent.”

Franky glared at the blank canvas before him, wide-bristled brushes held in both hands. Minutes passed as his mind worked, searching for that spark, that source of inspiration, his eyes scouring his surroundings. However, nothing caught his fancy.

He sighed before bracing himself, as if staring down the mouth of a dragon, and dipped his brushes into two cans of paint, one magenta and one clematis. As splatters rained across the canvas, a mantra resonated through his head.

I’ll do this my way.

25

Old Lady ASMR

—Joshua Eargle If, like the waxen blouse fighting thy breasts, one could merely unbutton the letters of thy sentences; If, like the beige cardigan about thy tender shoulders, one could simply disrobe the quotation marks of thy phrases; If, like the tentative fastener restricting thy breath, one could plainly u n z i p the spacing of thy lines; Perhaps, we could engage in authentic dialogue in that native tongue, derived from Jove in Love’s Elysium, which no man nor woman, flora nor fauna, sky nor sea, sun nor moon, may speak yet all of creation comprehends.

26

Mystery in the Night Print ­—Ruth Boggs

27

The Missing Person’s Case of Genesis McKinley

—Sarah Gastright Day 1 I could tell you all about how, when Genesis went missing, our small town was shocked. I could tell you about how we, the students, held candlelight vigils in hopes of bringing her back, or how Genesis’s whole life was brought to the public’s attention. I could tell you how Genesis was thought to be dead and how her parents sobbed so loud I could hear it two houses away. I could tell you everything pertaining to the case of Genesis McKinley, or Gen as I called her, the girl who disappeared for three years before returning abruptly back into our lives.

But I won’t. There’s nothing fun there. Gen went missing, everyone searched, we gave up hope, she returned. The bad guy was never found. Life returned to normal. Gen was home, safe and sound. Our town went back to normal.

But everyone is wrong. Gen isn’t back. She died in captivity and the man who did it will never be found. I want her back every time I see her imposter in class, every time the fake opens her mouth, and every time I hear her humming in the hallway. Every little quirk is exactly the same. Every imperfect sentence, every stumble over her own feet, every high pitch laugh, is exactly the same.

Except one. My Gen hates thunderstorms. Specifically, lightning. Her house was struck, years ago, and it burned to the ground. It’s how she came to live two houses away from mine. Ever since then, she would panic at the very mention of a storm. More than once, I saw her climb under her bed and cry in fear. She handled herself better as she aged, but her reactions remained violent.

A month after her return, there was a bad storm. Thunder shook the house, lightning was blinding, the wind howled, and the rain came down in sheets. I was getting ready to get on my computer to see if Gen was okay, when something caught my eye. Outside, just visible from my window, was a figure. Standing out there was Gen, facing the storm. I was shocked. Her hair was flapping in the wind, sticking to her face when possible, and her clothes were drenched. Her arms were held up to the sky, as though waiting for an embrace, and she looked happy.

My Gen wasn’t here. That wasn’t my Gen. I knew instantly. No one else saw her, no one else suspected a single thing. Gen didn’t know I knew, either. I never asked her about it, never wanted to bring suspicion. Some might say it was a product of the traumatic kidnapping. She grew out of the fear and what she did was relish in her new found confidence. In safety, even. But I don’t believe it. My Gen, the Gen I knew and loved, would never let herself be out in a storm like that.

So I began to watch her. You have much to learn, blank journal. So much to understand and be witness to. You will hold my secrets, be my confession and planner. I’m not crazy, blank journal. My Gen isn’t here. Something is wrong. You,

28

like everyone else, will grow to understand.

Day 52 This Gen is harder to track than my Gen. She makes it difficult for me. I have to get closer to her, to observe her, to find her flaws. We share many classes together. I doubt it would be very hard to force this Gen into my path. After all, my Gen never knew me. I knew her from class and my window. I wanted to see this beautiful girl who was dreadfully plain, this immensely intelligent girl who could never be our valedictorian and the only perfect creature in the world who wore so many imperfections. I wanted to know the girl who defied all that I observed as normal. She never disappoints me.

Day 187 Perhaps I took overly drastic measures, but for my Gen, for the truth, I accepted it.

I heard them every night before Gen’s kidnapping, through various means. The McKinley family was loud, always the ones for dramatics. My Gen was different.

Quiet, a piece of peace in the tornado. Her parents yelled and threw things, sometimes at her. My Gen hated how her parents fought. Their fighting gave me a way to know her, in the past. The McKinleys were creatures of routine, you see, so it was easy. She never knew the gifts were from me, but that was fine. No one really saw me anyways. I was the one who sat in the back of class, quietly, never succeeding enough to be noticed, but never failing. I wasn’t spectacular nor terrible. Just quiet, observing. It was okay that Gen never noticed. She didn’t have to. I knew we would get along if I ever tried. I didn’t try. She didn’t owe me and I didn’t want her to think that she did. She would have. Seeing her happy was enough.

I was the one who left the pamphlet for service animals at her door. I was the one who, without her knowing, found the perfect dog for her. I was the one who gave her this gift of comfort.

And I was the one who took it from her. Just to see her reaction. To test her. To see if Gen was who I thought she was. She cried, a lot even, as expected. The dog was precious to her. I was there for her, offering support in any way I could.

I knew we would get along. Having a friend made her happy. The funeral for her dog was quiet and lonely. Only her and I and the grave.

She did something wrong. Buried the dog with the wrong collar. The dog was brought in with a pink collar, not a red one. Gen, my Gen, knew that. This Gen buried the dog with a new red collar. Despicable. This fake pretending to care and not even doing what my Gen would have.

Day 238 She talks differently. Her speech improved. She talks slower, more deliberately.

29

A second longer between her responses. I hardly noticed at first. Her speech change is clearer on the phone. Another measure I took to observe her. I know my Gen and I know this imposter. She would never answer if I asked her face to face. So I had to find my own ways.

Day 482 She came to me today. Gen. She said she felt like she was being watched.

She felt like someone, perhaps her kidnapper, was stalking her. Lying in wait for his chance to grab her. She had seen someone outside her window, had noticed oddities in her phone conversations and with her computer. She didn’t know who to turn to or what to do. She asked for my help. I could have died happy if this was my Gen. But it wasn’t.

Stalked, though? I almost laughed at her. These measures were to protect her and yet she compared me to a lowly stalker, a kidnapper? Disgusting. I was the one outside her window some nights, to watch for strange activity. I found ways into her computer, to see what she was doing. I was listening to her calls, to listen to her speech. I had to. It was necessary to discover her secrets, why she’s lying to us, who she really is. What she really is. Gen could never be stalked. No one could do anything to her without my knowledge. You understand, don’t you?

I brushed away her worries like a good friend. She didn’t need to know what I was doing for her already. I promised to protect her, since I already was. She accepted my protection happily. I installed “virus protection” on her computer and phone. She didn’t think anything amiss. I had better access to both now. I could view her computer without interference, listen to her calls uninterrupted. I could fully understand the creature that took my Gen. Day 1,064 I don’t understand. Could I have been…wrong? No. No, it’s impossible! These memories, these lies in my mind… I never could have hurt Gen! A fake or not, what happened to her is an impossibility by my hands! It’s a trick! From someone who wants to hurt her! They filled my head with lies!

What I remember: Gen and I were watching a movie. In my room. Gen was right next to me, watching the movie avidly. I was staring at her face. I could almost believe it was Gen, my Gen, and not a fake. I did something unprecedented. I kissed her. A confession, a weakness, a gift—everything rolled together. Gen blushed and looked away, uncertain of herself. She wasn’t happy.

What was I supposed to do? This beautiful, fake person in front of me, who I had just kissed? My gift wasn’t received happily. What was I supposed to do? Not what happened.

I don’t understand. I had scissors on my bedside table. I lifted them up and brought them down. They struck Gen in the throat. It cut off her airway, collapsed the trachea. She began to bleed, to gasp, eyes wide with betrayal and pain. But

30

this was a fake. It shouldn’t bother me. I don’t think it did. A fake that could never be the real thing. It bothers me now.

Thunderstorms, the collar, her speech change: all of it points to only one solution! This is not my Gen! Why can’t anyone else understand this? Why can’t they see it?

By the time I regained my senses, Gen was little more than chunky paste.

Bleeding, stabbed into bits, the movie had ended. This fake Gen was gone. Tears came next. Why? This was a fake. I shouldn’t be crying. My Gen was lost years ago.

Someone, perhaps my mother, found me next to Gen’s destroyed body, sobbing. I think she screamed. I didn’t really care about her. I had to record everything. The officers came next.

Day 1,095 Pen and paper, at last. A small luxury, but one I hadn’t realized I loved.

It isn’t a hard case for the police. I was found with the murder weapon and the victim. There was blood all over me. They kept telling me I was crazy. Gen was Gen. No one else. They had brought her back from the kidnapping, her changes were from trauma, I was a sick boy. They just didn’t understand. They don’t know Gen, my Gen. I’m not crazy.

They said that they found my “bugs” in Gen’s house, in her laptop, in her phone. They said they found my journals, dozens of them, detailing my crimes.

The charges were stacking. They didn’t need my cooperation, although they still asked for it. This is a simple case. How could I fight them? I wouldn’t, didn’t. I killed her, it, the imposter. I saved everyone. Gen wasn’t Gen. She was a fake.

She was a monster. I saved them.

I’m not crazy, am I, paper?

Day 1,100 The Gen I killed felt so real. Her blood was red and watery and sticky. It dried brown. Thinking about her dead body, what I did to it, makes me sick. It shouldn’t.

But it does. Did I do something wrong? Was I wrong? Did I kill my Gen? No. Thunderstorms, the collar, her speech…it wasn’t my Gen. I know it wasn’t. My Gen wouldn’t change that drastically, no matter what they said. I hate what the imposter did to me. Thinking about her makes my chest ache and I want to puke.

The fake has ruined me.

Day 1,364 I keep seeing her. She appears out of thin air. It started during the trial, so long ago. In the masses of people. She followed me relentlessly. In the prison. During visitation. In my cell. Everywhere. In the corner of my eye. She appears, like a phantom. Some say it’s a guilty conscience. Others say I’m breaking apart.

31

Everyone is wrong. I know my Gen and the imposter. I studied them for years.

She came back.

She smiles at me evilly, this phantom. She keeps getting closer each time.

Before she barely appeared in the same room. Now, I feel her brush against me.

I hear her whisper in my ear. I feel her breath on my neck, her hands wrapping around me. I hear her say my name. I try to get away but she follows me. A ghost, a phantom, not my Gen. The one I kissed. The one I killed. The one that ruined me.

Day 1,399 The night before my execution. My last meal has been eaten. I wait patiently.

For Gen. She will come. Her phantom will come. I understand some about her now.

She appeared, just now. In shorts and a tank top. Graceful. Devoid of any scar or mar of being stabbed. Pristine. Beautiful. Lovely.

She sits on my bed and smiles evilly at me. Tempting, maybe. I stare at her, trying to understand. What is she? A hallucination? A phantom? She reaches out and asks for my hand. I give it to her, having nothing else to lose. Her skin is frigid. She bites my hand, drawing blood, straining bones, and looks at me.

Tempting. Taunting. Evil. Not my writing hand, at least. She wants a response from me.

So what is she? What is Genesis McKinley? I don’t get much time to think it through. When I don’t respond to her, she growls. It turns into a gurgle as she opens her mouth wider and wider. I hear her jaw crack, dislocate. I see her contort, the cracking of bones and joints, the puncturing of skin. I smell the rot as bones tear through. She changes into a rotting beast. A zombie, perhaps? A bottomless pit? A demon? I don’t know. I just know she isn’t my Gen. She never was.

This beast, this monster, this thing, was never my Gen, no matter how much I wanted her to be. She isn’t the one I watched from my window and her window and listened to on the phone and saw through her computer’s camera. It wore a pretty mask. It doesn’t bother to now. I almost wish it would.

My execution has come hours early.

32

Oban, Scotland Photograph —Kimberly Rhodes

33

It’ll Never Feel Like Home

—Maggie Holly I’ve heard you can see the top of an old church steeple when the water gets low. I’ve never seen it, but when I’m fourteen there’s a long drought and the tops of trees begin to stick out, haphazardly cut a few feet below normal water level.

With the lake down so low, they begin to stretch up like mangled fingers reaching for the sky.

“But what did they do with the people in the cemetery?” I ask my dad in a hushed voice as we stand in the cracked red mud that usually lays at the bottom of the lake. Ahead of us are docks as far as the eye can see, some still with boats at them, laying directly on the dirt. I shiver against the early December chill.

“I’m sure they moved them, honey.”

I’m appalled. “Moved them? You mean like…dug them up?” My dad nods, but he’s not really paying much attention to me. His brow is furrowed and he’s staring out across the shallow water, mangled tree fingers reaching up as though desperately grasping at something, anything. It’s odd, honestly, that there’s an underwater ghost town three hundred yards from my back door, and that thousands of people were told to abandon their homes, which in 1950s Georgia were almost definitely old family homes. The valley was flooded, and now their family homes lay at the bottom of one of the largest man-made lakes in the south. A story run by a local newspaper several years ago features an old picture of a relocated man at his new house, sitting in a rocking chair, with the caption “It’ll never feel like home.” I know now that there was a conscientious effort to relocate as many graves as possible—I have read as much in multiple articles and books. Still, to me it seems impossible that every single grave from every single small family graveyard was moved, and that thought has haunted me ever since we moved to Georgia.

“But, like…are you sure?” my eighth-grade self continues. By this age, I know that there are bodies in the lake, as people go missing all the time. More disturbing to me, however, is that consecrated final resting places might be down there, never getting any visitors other than the occasional fish. For some reason, I feel more haunted by the idea of people who had established lives that used to exist under the water than I do by victims of murders or accidents that may be down there as well. New bodies may come and go, but those have been down there underwater since 1950—which, to my fourteen-year-old self, feels like the dawn of time.

My dad gives me that look that says “You are starting to annoy me, but I am not going to tell you that because I do not want to be rude” and answers in a voice that is just starting to verge on condescending.

“Yes, honey. I’m sure.”

I suppose you could call the water “bottle-green,” if said bottle had been

34

dropped in the woods of the humid south and left there for thirty years. When the levels drop, as they do every winter when the dam is let out, there’s an old dirt race track you can still see. The corps of engineers puts out warnings to anyone who may be fishing or boating, as chimneys and rooftops can be hazardous at low pool. Every year people disappear and reappear, days, weeks, months, even years later. On the middle school bus, an all-knowing eighth grader definitively tells us that gangs from Atlanta drive all the way up to the suburbs to dump bodies wrapped in chains and weighed down with concrete. When someone’s early morning solo fishing trip lasts a bit past early morning and all that turns up is an empty boat, the entire tri-county area waits with baited breath as minutes creep into hours and it becomes all-too-clear that the search is no longer for a person—just for their body. I can see the headlines; they are always the same: “Boy Hit Passing Boat, Body Found” “Fisherman Missing for 3 Weeks Found” “Boating Accident, 2 Still Missing” Unless you know them, they stop being individuals and turn into headlines you read, sigh “What a shame” or “That is just too bad,” put down the paper, and go about your day. The reservoir provides much-needed water to the metro Atlanta area by damming the Chattahoochee River, but that does not mean there are not costs associated with it. When the lake is high, it represents life, water, growth; but when it gets low, and that town peaks out, and the bodies start appearing, it becomes death—the death of a town, the death of its history, the death of its residents, all wrapped up in that dirty, bottle green water. I know that tragedies can and do happen anywhere, but somehow, it almost seems to me that there is a very human price for trifling with nature, and maybe this is divine retribution for the increasing urbanization of north Georgia.

Sometimes I lay on my back and float into the lake and think about blue-green bloated bodies half eaten by a twelve-foot-long catfish. I do not know anyone who has actually seen such a catfish, but everyone seems to know about them, just like everyone seems to know that Usher sometimes comes to our local movie theater but I cannot seem to find anyone who has actually seen him there. Still, we all insist they’re down there in the deep valleys of the old town darkness, swimming around in abandoned homes and corner stores. These giant fish, I have learned, are a part of the folklore surrounding every major lake, and everyone seems to know someone who knows someone who encountered one and barely lived to tell the tale. I think about the graveyards, too, except in my mind, the bodies were never moved, and they dance with the seaweed and wave happily at the passing fish with their skeletal grins, sitting comfortably atop their tombstones in their underwater world. To me, it is like an underworld—the land of the dead. The lake pulls its victims down, down—but it is not so much a hell, just a strange underwater party. Dreaming is strange that way. It feels like what you thought swimmer’s ear was as a child. You know, water slowly rising in the cavity

35

of your skull, ominously creeping up to cover your brain, slosh-sloshing against the sides of your head. That’s what dreaming feels like—water sliding across your brain.

My parents always called me a water baby when I was a child. My mother signed me up for swim lessons when I was two. As she tells it, “Well, you were getting in the water regardless, so I figured we should at least make sure you could swim.” I have always loved the water, but I cannot put my finger on exactly when I began to fear it as well, when I started to pause before plunging mindlessly into the murky darkness. Maybe that’s the true beauty of nature—it is at once something to be both loved and feared. Lake Lanier has been a pivotal part of my life, with many hot summer days spent splashing in the water, flying over waves on an innertube, or laying, sweating, and attempting a tan in the hot Georgia sun. Most of the time, you only see the beauty of it, the part worth loving.

Every winter when the corps lets out the dam, especially during a particularly dry spell, I am struck with the delicate balance of Man and Nature. We force our will upon it, and it continues to adapt, consuming our abandoned places and abandoning those we inhabit. What are the consequences of forcing nature to bend to our will? Sometimes I imagine the water as a fire, slowly rising between 1950 and 1957 and consuming ecosystems and histories in its path.

When you open your eyes about a foot under water and there’s rays of sunshine shining through that murky, green-brown water, highlighting bits of seaweed and scum, you sometimes think, “wow, nature has a way of making even ugly things beautiful.” The sunshine, like the trees, is like fingers, only I imagine the mangled trees are trying to grab me and drag me down to the giant underworld catfish below, and the sunshine is angel fingers, trying to save me.

When I’m sixteen-years-old, my grandfather drops a pair of sunglasses right off the end of the dock. Nice sunglasses, too—Oakley’s, maybe, or Ray-Bans, but not the fifteen-dollar drug store kind of sunglasses. My dad, fortunately, has a friend who casually has more scuba diving gear than one man should legally own, and who gladly loans it to us. This is how I spend an afternoon sunning myself on the dock and watching my father and his father-in-law take turns suiting up in full scuba gear and jumping off our dock into water that is a maximum of sixteen feet deep on a good day. Two years later, my grandfather is in hospice care, dying in a bed in his home and sucking on a damp washcloth because he is too weak to drink water. I’m successfully pretending that nothing is wrong, because as an almost eighteen-year-old, that’s my best coping mechanism. My mother, however, is convinced that I should say goodbye, and she corners me one Tuesday afternoon.

“Your grandfather is going to die. Soon,” she says, as though I don’t already know this.

“Okay.”

“You should go talk to him one more time.”

36

What do you say to someone who doesn’t even know who you are anymore?

I awkwardly sit in an old armchair next to the bed, wringing my hands. His eyes are closed. I’m not even sure if he can hear me, much less what to say.

Awkwardly, I begin recounting the sunglasses story, how I watched them get into wetsuits and flippers to jump into water that was only about twice as deep as the deep end of a swimming pool. By the end of the story, I’m crying, although I do not remember starting to cry. I close with a simple “I love you. Goodbye.” His eyes don’t flicker. His face doesn’t change. But, to this day, I swear he reaches out his fingers towards me—angel fingers.

I only sleep a few hours that night. When my father shakes me awake around five o’clock in the morning to tell me he has passed, I don’t cry. I had been dreaming, dreaming about tree tops and steeples and happy skeletons, about giant catfish and racetracks and old men in rocking chairs, and about rays of sunshine, shimmering through green-brown water, pulling me upwards.

Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, Scotland Photograph —Kimberly Rhodes

37

Death Zone Dreaming

—Will Baird I couldn’t sleep. It was 3:00 a.m., and a restless excitement was building in my chest, an unquenchable craving that had manifested in me over the past year. I turned over in my sleeping bag and checked to see if Ryan was still asleep. He was, though I had no idea how. It was summit day, and adrenaline was rushing through my veins like a wild river. I was experiencing summit fever, or hiker’s high, what Jon Krakauer calls “the thrill of tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.” I’d never climbed a mountain in my life, though the prospect had always held in me an innate fascination, gaining strength and fervor with each day that I abstained from fulfilling it.

“Ryan,” I whispered, gently nudging him in the side. He simply grunted and pulled the sleeping bag more firmly around his shoulder. I don’t know what I was thinking anyway, that somehow he might want to climb the mountain in the middle of the night and on three hours of sleep. One could hope, but I also knew a bear climbing through the window wasn’t going to wake Ryan up.

I turned back over and unzipped myself from my synthetic cocoon, opened the door, and flopped out of the back of Ryan’s car. The cool pavement met my feet as I looked up at the base of Grandfather Mountain, a layer of fog cloaking its dense forest. The river winding below the parking lot provided its dull rhythm of fluidity, a tumbling, burbling sonnet of nature. There was a slight mist in the air, falling gently on my bare feet. I walked over to the beginning of the trail, beckoning to me like a long-lost friend. As I drank in the sights and sounds of the untamed wild, the sweet smell of the moist air and the fog brushing my skin, my soul filled with something like ecstasy. I felt a palpable, joy-infused energy in the presence of such vastness, standing in the aura of earth’s ancient formations. I lifted my eyes and gazed into the foliage above me, a web of birch and maple, pine and oak, opening here and there to a majestic glittering of stars. Standing there reminded me of a famous quote by George Mallory, a legendary climber who died attempting to make the first ascent of Everest in 1924, last seen eight hundred feet from the summit. He equated the great human desire to climb, the triumph of the spirit of adventure over doubt, to pure joy. He said, “What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.” I couldn’t agree more. Standing on the precipice of the untamed world, I felt a more freeing kind of joy than ever before.

However, my intoxication was soon broken by the sound of an eighteenwheeler coming up the side of the mountain. I glared at it, wondering who would have the audacity to disrupt such a hallowed place. I wanted to be submerged in the wilderness, completely free from humanity, and even though I was further

38

removed than ever before, here were the strings of society clinging on. I took a breath and turned my back to the road, determined to ignore the headlights and rumbling diesel engines. Since my feet were beginning to freeze anyway, I trekked back to our base camp, the back of Ryan’s Mazda 3 Hatchback. It would be another five hours before we’d make our attempt, but I knew none of it would be spent sleeping.

After hours of restless anticipation, I saw the first rays of light breaking through the trees and into the car. I wasted no time, unzipping my bag and throwing on my gear, “accidentally” elbowing Ryan in the gut.

“Ryan!”

“Hmm?” He opened his eyes blearily. It was a miracle he could sleep so soundly in that cramped space. Our feet were close to sticking out of his rear windshield.

“Wake up! Or I’m climbing it without you.”

Ryan had never been a morning person, his bursts of slumber more like nightly flatlines than typical human sleep. But even though his excitement wasn’t quite at my own stratospheric level, he was quick to revive himself in eagerness after I finally jolted him awake. By 7:00 a.m. we were at the foot of the trail, sizing up our conquest. I didn’t desire to think of such pure nature as some kind of opponent, but it was hard to break my mind from that brutish mentality. The idea of braving nature’s most dangerous environments, Man vs. Wild style, and proving my own ability to survive, endure, accomplish—summit—had been ingrained in my nature. But I also knew that, even though Grandfather Mountain wasn’t more than a big hill compared to Everest or K2, my fate was firmly in nature’s grasp. As Anatoli Boukreev stated while climbing on the 1996 Everest expedition that killed eight people in one day, “The last word always belongs to the mountain.”

Ryan and I began the trek, a difficult 3.5 mile hike to the top of Calloway peak, with an elevation gain of about 2,400 feet. It was hardly Everest, but in that moment, we couldn’t have been persuaded otherwise by Edmund Hillary himself. It was our Everest. However, while we plunged deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of oak and pine, trickling creeks and massive boulders, it quickly became apparent that we weren’t leaving civilization as far behind as we would have liked. While we were enjoying the view, the trek, the sense of oneness with the natural world, ever behind us was the sound of tires on pavement, the view of a distant mountain home splitting an otherwise harmonious landscape. I sped up the pace, perturbed at the intrusions, and trying to will myself away from civilization.

“Will, slow down and enjoy it, man,” Ryan said from a few meters back. I shook my head.

“But—” I gestured helplessly at a giant truck carrying lumber down the

39

mountain. He nodded. The realization hadn’t been lost on him either.

“We won’t see them much longer.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right,” I relented. Still, I was restless. I wondered if there was ever a true escape from the confines of society. Even Thoreau admitted his time at Walden Pond was just an experiment, never believing “the idea that he could truly isolate himself from others.” After hiking for about a mile and a half, and gaining 1,000 feet in elevation, we saw that the road far below us was finally nonexistent, the sounds of mankind engulfed by the deep thrum of nature’s melody. But even then, the trail was always before us, the crushed twigs and trodden soil of a thousand footsteps. Every now and then a family would pass us on their way down, or some determined spirit would fly by us, unaware that Grandfather Mountain had been summitted before him. I yearned for the path to disappear, to take the road less traveled by, and forge my own passage up the mountain. But I also knew that this was a near-impossibility. We would most likely get ourselves trapped on an isolated ridge, or spend hours going in circles, never to actually reach the summit.

Even Everest, the once insurmountable peak, has become more of a tourist attraction that ever before. One of Krakauer’s main points in Into Thin Air relates the devastating effects of the commercialization of Everest, not only to its wildness, but also to the people who are attempting to tame it. He states that there are now a lot of Walter Mittys and inexperienced dreamers who lack a proper respect for nature and its power, thinking that paid guides will be able to drag them up and then back down the mountain. Their ambition stems from a cool story to tell their grandkids, but of course, “when things go wrong up in the Death Zone—and sooner or later they always do—the strongest guides in the world may be powerless to save a client’s life.” Even Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, two seasoned climbing legends and guides during Krakauer’s 1996 ascent, were unable to save their own lives.

However, even dwelling on the perils of Everest did not dissuade me from my desire to venture into the wildest portions of the world. It was this very danger that constituted the world’s wildness, and I knew I couldn’t have one without the other. The most beautiful and magnificent things are often so because of the magnitude of their power, like a thundercloud or an erupting volcano. If anything, it was this notion that Everest was no longer the territory of elite mountaineers, that the Southeast Ridge to the summit was called the “Yak Route,” that turned me off from the world’s highest mountain. And it was this same assimilation of Grandfather Mountain into civilization that nagged at my side, all the way to the top. Even when we got within fifty feet of the summit, accompanied by grins and hi-fives, Ryan and I had to wait a good thirty minutes before those already on the top decided to make way for us. This isn’t to say we didn’t enjoy our taking of the mountain. Summit fever never left my heart, and the smell of the open air at 6,000 feet was breathtaking. But I knew in my bones that there was more to be

40

had. All the way down I plotted future ventures, crazier climbs, more dangerous trails. Grandfather Mountain was no longer my Everest. There would be more.

There had to be.

As Fast as Your Feet Can Take You Photograph —Regan Reed 41

I Want to Have the Earth

—Anna Cooke I want to have the earth I want to lie on its dirt I want grass in my hair I want the earth in my heart I want bushes in my back I want trees growing in my spine I want oceans in my eyes I want storms in my ears & fire in my mind I want seeds for tears to justify being sad all the time I want volcanoes for feet to set the earth on fire I want lightning in my hands to be my words I want the world & I want to eat it all.

Untitled Acrylic on Canvas —Maya Heard 42

Dear Mosquito

—Joshua Eargle Why, oh why, dear Mosquito, is it that you beat so effortlessly upon the window?

Why, oh why, my dear, little friend, do you strike so desperately upon the glass?

A scream rises in my chest but is clenched in my throat, as there are so many words, so many sentences, just so many things that my heart is pleading to assure you.

But, alas, I am fully aware, and bitterly so, that you would not even take notice of the sound from behind this simple, yet seemingly indestructible, barrier that has been obstructed in between us.

I wish to be candor with you of this wall and how well I am acquainted

43

with your trials.

I possess a great understanding of that world and, as exhaustive as it is in thought, how it can truly be but one man’s greatest exile.

I understand how, from this side of the window pane, one might think, you have everything as you need.

For, from this side, it appears as though you have your grass, you have your sun, you have your air, and you have your sea, and you have animals to feed from, and you have everything as you need.

I comprehend the idea that, in comparison to that dun sky of yours, the flickering light that dwindles ever so slightly above my head might appear tantalizing.

I understand how you have come to this thought, this one desire, that if you simply had the light, if you could simply be inside the corners of this little,

44

four wall dormitory of mine, if you could simply be a part of this world, then perhaps, all would be well.

Perhaps, if you tried the left panel?

Perhaps, if you tried the right?

Possibly, if you tried that little smudge at the base of the glass?

I cry for you, dear Mosquito, as I discern the fatigue that is so evident in your little body, and your little spirit, and your little wings, from the constant torment of sensing that you are so close yet so far away from shattering this shield that you believe you may never break!

Why, dear Mosquito,

45

I do, in fact, witness your dilemma.

I do see the struggle you face in your conquest.

But I, just as so many others, must only watch as it is you, dear Mosquito, that must stumble upon the realization that deliverance comes when one decides that there is but no glass, that there is but no window, only the separation that you, dear Mosquito, have conjured in your thoughts.

Why, oh why, dear Mosquito, is it that you beat so effortlessly upon the window?

Why, oh why, my dear, little friend, do you strive so desperately for the most insignificant taste of liberation?

46

St. Andrews Botanical Gardens, St. Andrews, Scotland Photographs —Kimberly Rhodes

47

Christ and Her Pussycat

—Olivia Aldridge Astrid peeks out from behind one of the walls that supports the bridge and laughs. For the second day in a row, a white Emergency Shelter van loiters under the Watergate Freeway Bridge. Nobody has bitten. If Astrid or any of the residents of Camp Watergate wanted to be in a shelter, they’d have sought it out themselves a long while ago. The seats of the van are probably crawling with bedbugs. But it’s November, and in November, the District gets pushy.

Hypothermia-related deaths are more shameful than drug overdoses.

Two District employees, a man and a woman, stand by the van in navy blue uniforms with yellow lettering that spell “DHS.” They are here to answer questions the campers might have about the signs that went up a week ago, the ones informing them that Camp Watergate will be evacuated by November twentieth. But the spying woman doesn’t have any questions. She is keeping her tent right where it is, come hell or high water, yes. The local government, unlike she, is not divine.

Walls and a roof aren’t the same thing as shelter. She has known this for a long time.

Am I supposed to say something?

—You know why you’re here. Let’s talk about that.

Because of Michael. I’m here because of Michael.

—Michael. Tell me about him.

You already know everything.

—I want to hear you speak to it. Take your time.

When I was in the third grade, that was when Michael first started it. My birthday. We were playing sardines and I hid in the chicken coop. That was where he found me. He put his finger up to his mouth, telling me to be quiet, and with his other hand he pushed me, real gentle, really, down into the corner. It was dark, and he sat down next to me. I could hear Rachel and my friends looking for me. He put his hand over my mouth and told me “Shhhhh…” and that was when.

—When what? Can you tell me what?

When.

—Let’s do an activity. Take this piece of paper and draw a house on it.

Okay. There’s a house.

—Now draw a family in the house.

There. Now there’s a family.

—Why are all of the people in the house smiling?

That’s what families do. They fucking smile.

Astrid does not live behind the particular wall she was spying from. This wall is

48

a Boy’s Club, at least at night. But it is also the White Boy’s Club, so she hangs out there during the day. The only other white woman who lives at Camp Watergate is Trixie, and Trixie is nuts, absolutely batshit, pushing ten-year-old paperwork at every opportunistic reporter who has walked through the camp these past few days.

“I should have been living in Prague since 1998, see? Look, I’m a victim of the American government,” Trixie will say.

Astrid reminds herself (when she is sober) to feel sorry for Trixie.

Today, she smokes a joint under the overpass. Donald—one of the white men—is well-connected in weed. Many of the campers don’t fuck with Donald because he doesn’t look like the type of guy you should fuck with. He’s bald, with a tight scalp covered in crudely-inked, blue tattoos that extend to his neck and his face. There’s a little tear inked beneath his left eye, very faint, like a fine scratch that got there by accident.

Three other men lounge near them, sitting on white plastic lawn furniture collected from dumpsters. One of them is José, who is not quite white, but isn’t anything like the Spanish-speakers that sleep uncovered on the gravel under the main drag of the freeway, and because he is well-connected in substances other than weed, he has earned his place in the White Boy’s Club. There is also a cat—fluffy ivory fur, deep blue eyes, its looks both regal and somehow distinctly inbred—tied to Astrid’s chair leg with a long fray of denim fabric. Surely it must be poorly fed and riddled with fleas, but this is also a pet that has been pampered into sin. An animal this self-important must only be called by the name of its very species. That’s Cat, if you please, just Cat. A young man and woman approach them from a distance, trekking through the grass. Neither can be older than twenty-three or twenty-four. Astrid giggles at the man—his gait is funny, slanted, and he has viciously red hair. The girl’s looks are nondescript—mousy hair, freckles, and dress pants poorly suited for the currently muddy terrain of Camp Watergate. Her shoulders are tense, and her eyes dart around. A novice.

Donald snorts. “Who gave this bitch a notepad?”

Astrid laughs at Donald. Reporters get right under his paranoid skin, but she eats them up. A lot of them have been coming by since the signs went up, and many of the campers aren’t worried as a result, sure that the mayor will be pressured out of the eviction by the media.

The young reporters now stand in front of them, and the girl says, with trepidation, “We’re reporters from StreetWise, the District’s street newspaper.

Would any of you be willing to answer a few questions?”

Donald leaps to his feet, his blue-swirled temple pulsing. “Not me,” he says and knocks over a chair in his rush to flee the reporters.

Astrid leans forward eagerly, like Cat when she dangles a treat inches from his face.

49

“Suuure,” she says, drawing out the word.

“Okay,” says the girl reporter uneasily, eying the joint in Astrid’s hand. “Um, do you know where you’ll go? If Mayor Bowser goes through with the eviction of this lot tomorrow?”

Astrid smiles. “Listen,” she says, “ever read the Bible?”

The girl begins scribbling on her notepad, but stops short.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Okay. Well then you know that Jesus was homeless.”

“Oh, well yeah.”

“And you know that He’s coming back.”

Silence.

“I feel indebted to tell you, honey, that I—” “Um,” says the girl, now visibly uncomfortable, “Thank you. Come on, Jonas.”

“Yeah,” says the redhead, licking his lips. “Yeah, but we should take her picture.

Can we take your picture?”

The redhead, as it turns out, has a hilarious accent, something European.

Astrid laughs, says, “Yes, please do.” Cat purrs against her leg, as if he knows the camera loves him. But the girl still eying the joint in Astrid’s hand, says, “No, let’s go, Jonas.”

Astrid watches them as they walk away, roughly tugging Cat onto her lap to stroke him. She feels momentarily robbed of the chance to spread her gospel, but forgets quickly and heads over to her own tent on the far side of Camp Watergate. She has lived here for quite a while now, three years, or five, or two.

Long enough to have collected matching, plush furniture in a turquoise hound’stooth pattern. A palace all her own.

I’m sorry to show up like this.

—Keep the ice pack on that.

I’ll be out of your hair first thing in the morning. Anthony just needs time to cool off.

—You should have come sooner. Why the fuck are you with him?

Why would I ever have come to you, Rachel? I barely know why I’m here now.

—Shit happened to all of us in that house. It’s not my fault.

I told you when I was nine years old and you didn’t do anything. What kind of a sister doesn’t do anything when she knows something like that?

—You’re upset because Michael got out.

No. I’m upset because…what kind of a sister doesn’t call for a whole year?

—Why did you even come?

I don’t know.

It’s at a deep and hazy point in Astrid’s sleep when the sound of a zipper confuses her dreams. Light creeps in as the tent flap opens inch by inch.

50

Donald’s face emerges through the flap, followed by his muscular upper body.

“Donald?” Astrid says, bleary.

“I was trying not to wake you up,” he says, crawling so his shadow covers her, his voice like candy laced in arsenic.

There is a beat of silent tension before Astrid bucks her knees against his stomach and scratches his cheeks with dirty fingernails. Donald brays in anger and grabs Astrid’s wrists, pressing them to the ground as she gnashes her teeth and turns her head side-to-side, searching for something to bite. He slams his pelvis against her flailing legs. Suddenly, there’s a hiss, and a blur of matted ivory fur flings itself onto Donald’s head.

“Fucking Christ!” Donald screams.

Cat sinks teeth deep into the back of his neck, paws and scratches his throat.

Drops of blood hit Astrid’s face as Donald sits up, still screaming, trying to shake Cat off. The animal draws hard red lines through the ink on his scalp. He pries Cat off with his hands and hurls him across the tent. Astrid catches the flailing mass of fur in her arms. Cat and woman lean forward in a wild hiss, and Donald scrambles out of the tent.

Her laughter can be heard in tents on the other side of the overpass. Let them hear and know that Astrid has the righteous wrath of God on a leash.

—It breaks my heart to see you this way.

This place is so full of peace. You ought to come, Rachel. We all rely on one another here. It’s not like it was at home, with the devils all around. I’m special now; Father York says so.

—Who is Father York? Another one of your “friends?”

Just because you haven’t met him you don’t think he’s real. You come into my home and you insult my friends.

—You don’t have a home, Astrid. You have a goddamn tent. And filthy cat.

You should watch your language with me, sister. This animal was sent to me by my Father. One day I’ll be called on to save you, just like the rest.

—You really are crazy, Astrid. Maybe Anthony wasn’t so bad. Maybe he dealt with you the only way he could.

Father York, forgive her, for she knows not what she does.

On Friday (Eviction Day, Judgment Day), the two young reporters are first to show up. By noon, Camp Watergate is flooded with camera crews, DHS staff, and bright yellow trucks which promise to tow away the campers’ belongings.

Astrid heads into the fray, lugging Cat under his armpits as he hisses furiously.

She laughs as she catches a glimpse of Donald hightailing it across the street, away from the media multitudes.

Astrid spots Trixie from across the grass. She has cornered a silver-haired reporter with a fancy camera—he looks far more important that the redhead and

51

the girl—and is explaining her plight.

“Look at these documents. I should have been in Prague since 1998!”

Astrid hustles over, still clutching Cat, to save the reporter from Trixie. The reporter looks relieved for the interruption of a new face. It usually takes them a minute to realize which ones are the nutjobs, and by then it is hard to respectfully extract oneself from the conversation.

“Hello,” he says to Astrid, “Do you have a message you’d like to give the mayor before the eviction today?” His camera is pointed toward her face.

Astrid hoists up Cat so the camera captures them equally, basking in their moment. “Mayor Bowser,” she says, “Would you turn Christ out? Would you have that on your hands? Jesus says feed the hungry, feed my sheep. Jesus was homeless, see—” Without apology, the reporter spins around and begins to sprint. All of the cameras and notepads are heading toward a group of people on the other side of the lot.

“Mayor Bowser is here!” someone yells.

The journalists pin Mayor Bowser in from all sides in a swarm. Astrid trots toward the crowd and pulls in close to the redhead and his partner, who are stuck on the outer edge of the circle. She can’t hear anything the mayor says, but in a matter of minutes, the crowd disbands, and DHS employees walk toward the nearest group of tents, passing out white fliers to each camper. Behind them, the trucks groan forward, and men in city uniforms begin scooping belongings off the grass and into trucks, dismantling tents.

Astrid is flustered by their quick progress. She walks slowly, as if not to be noticed, to the far side of the overpass, and closes herself off in her tent with Cat. She estimates she has an hour, maybe less, before the city employees reach her tent. So she sits on her ottoman and bows her head, praying for strength in her hound’s-tooth Gethsemane.

In forty-five minutes, a woman dressed in DHS garb approaches Astrid’s tent.

“Ma’am,” she says, “Will you come out for a moment?”

Astrid unzips the tent flap, but stays inside. The woman hands her one of the white fliers, bearing the Department of Human Services seal and the assurance that her tent will be torn down and kept for a limited time in city storage. Astrid stares straight ahead, looking at nothing, and the woman leaves.

The two young reporters watch her from nearby, having followed the DHS woman to Astrid’s tent.

“It looks like IKEA in there,” the redhead mutters a little too loudly. “How did she get all of that stuff?”

Astrid looks up and sees them through a screen in the side of her tent. She looks at the girl—her hair so clean, her forehead so folded in concern. Astrid sees the unmistakable pity in the girl’s eyes as she walks to the front of the tent and says, after clearing her throat, “Excuse me.”

52

Astrid does not acknowledge the girl, who shifts nervously. “Excuse me,” she says again, “What will you do now?”

Astrid laughs once more, but this time her voice is cold, and there is a knowing spite in her eyes, because accepting the ignorance and ingratitude of one’s children is the inescapable lot of a Savior. The girl will leave Camp Watergate and return to a hot shower, a clean bed. What will Astrid do? Not go to a shelter, where she would have to set Cat loose in the streets. Panhandle enough quarters for a metro card, perhaps, and ride until closing. Or freeze to death in a park bench crucifixion.

“I’ve bled for you before,” Astrid says, staring hard into the girl’s eyes, “and I’ll bleed for you again.”

Dunstaffnage, Scotland Photograph —Kimberly Rhodes

53

Haiku

—Anna Cooke Where else would I be If I had not had these trees?

—Lost within the sea.

Waterfall to the World Painting ­—Anna Cooke 54

Teacher’s Pet

—Emma Mathews

Darby tossed her lunch remains into the trashcan outside the school cafeteria.

She had unsuccessfully tried to convince her mom that tuna sandwiches, grapes, and saltine crackers made for a terrible lunch, so she had (as always) eaten the crackers and tossed the rest. Her stomach grumbled angrily as she trudged through the crowded halls back to her locker, unable to contain her grumpy attitude towards the rest of the school day. Darby reached her locker and threw her backpack on the ground, letting out a loud sigh of exasperation.

Someone had slipped a note into the slats at the top of her locker, something that happened fairly regularly. She sighed, frustrated that her locker was always being picked for random notes. She picked up the note, shoved it into her pocket, and grabbed the books she would need for Earth Science and English. Darby, deep in her own pity, missed the large group of middle schoolers being given a tour of the high school. She had been so enthralled in her own miserable feelings that she had not noticed the group walking through. Darby’s miserable personality stemmed from her ridiculous levels of angst, something that most teens experienced. Sometimes, though, Darby felt like her angst was going to make her explode.

Darby walked into English and sat down at her desk at the back of the classroom. As miserable as she seemed, she felt secretly happy because English was her favorite subject. She loved diving into the books the class read, able to escape her boring tuna-fish-sandwich-filled life and immerse herself into the words on the pages. She suddenly remembered the note from her locker as she rummaged through her backpack to find a pen. She pulled it out of her pocket and opened it, smoothing out the creases. It read: Congratulations, Darby Anne Meyers!

You have been selected to participate in Druid High School’s very first Quest of the Animals. Confused? Alarmed? Scared? Don’t be!

You have been selected after careful consideration. Your skills, personality, and dislike for the mundane aspects of life have made YOU the single most important part of this Quest. You seem like the kind of person who likes animals and wants to be more involved. This might seem abrupt and weird, almost like a joke, but we need you, Darby. The universe needs you! Please come to Principal Quad’s office after the final bell this afternoon.

Thank you, The Office of Quest and Animal Member Management Darby gaped at the paper in front of her. What kind of weird joke was this? She hated animals. She despised everything from tiny hamsters to giant elephants.

Had some of the cheerleaders seen her walking down the hall and pegged her

55

as some kind of easy target for jokes? Obviously, the note had to be totally fake and in no way a legitimate, real thing. Was it actually Principal Quad’s way of calling her down to the office for something? Had Darby been late to school too many times? Could this be Principal Quad’s way of reprimanding her? It was all too weird for Darby to process. She ripped up the note, balled up the tiny shreds of paper in her shaky hand, and tossed it in the trash. She looked in the bin and felt a sense of relief to see the shredded note had landed in a pile of yogurt and pencil shavings. Her English teacher had already written the in-class exercise on the board, so Darby scurried back to her desk and sat down. She tried to pay attention, but the note was still fresh on her mind.

At the end of fifth period, Darby began to walk toward the school parking lot, ready to break free of the chains that were her school. As she opened the door to the front of the school, she felt a sense of relief. Another mundane day was done.

By the time she had walked across the parking lot to her car, she remembered the note; she reluctantly turned around and made her way back across the parking lot. As Darby entered the mostly empty hallway near the cafeteria, she let out an exasperated sigh and made her way towards the main office, though she dragged her feet and walked as slowly as possible. Darby got to the office door and opened it. She walked up to the secretary’s desk, her anxiety increasing with each step she took. She stared at the secretary, waiting for her to acknowledge Darby, but the pudgy woman didn’t look up from her crossword puzzle until Darby loudly cleared her throat. The woman glanced up, rolled her eyes, and stared at Darby, waiting for her to say what she wanted.

“Oh-uh… Yes, hi. So, I got a really weird note in my locker this afternoon, and I ripped it up and threw it away because it seems fake, and honestly, if this is a prank, I really want no part of it because I’m super busy and I’m a senior and my name’s Darby.” Darby practically shouted her statement at the woman. She hadn’t realized how anxious she felt about the situation. The secretary blinked a few times, cleared her throat, blinked some more, and pointed in the direction of Principal Quad’s office.

“That way. She’s waiting,” the woman said. Her voice sounded eerily silky, almost like Darby imagined a snake would sound if it could talk. Darby also noticed how narrow the woman’s eyes were and how narrow her nostrils were.

She realized she had been staring at the woman with her mouth wide open for much too long, so she turned and walked away, still sort-of staring at the desk.

Darby passed a couple of closed office doors until she reached the last office, Principal Quad’s, its door also closed. Darby knocked, praying to every god she could think of that Principal Quad had left already. Much to Darby’s dismay, she heard a muffled “Come in.” Darby turned the doorknob and entered the office.

Dim light from a desk lamp and light from the illuminated computer screen danced across the ornate desk at the back of the room. The desk chair was

56

turned away from the door, so Darby could only see the top of Principal Quad’s head.

“Uh, hello? Principal Quad? It’s me, Da—what the hell?” Darby stopped talking as soon as the smell hit her. A combination of lavender perfume, grilled meat, and a petting zoo hit her nose. Darby gagged and took a step backwards, hoping to make her quick escape. Her backpack hit what she assumed was the door, but when she reached for the handle, she gasped—the doorway had disappeared.

In its place stood a wall with no doorknob and no way out. Darby was officially trapped.

As Darby looked around the room in horror, she noticed the sweltering heat in the office. She was beginning to sweat as the smell continued to get worse.

The walls were painted a bright green, similar to a shade one might find in the rainforest. While she thought this was odd, Darby didn’t think it was as weird as the giant pillow she saw in the corner. It looked eerily similar to a cat bed, and it was covered in hair. A pile of what looked to be raw chicken legs was situated near the giant cat bed, and Darby had to hold back vomit as she realized that that was what was making the office stink.

Darby felt like she had entered a dream, yet she couldn’t remember falling asleep and she knew she was still at school, so her only logical explanation was that someone had slipped her drugs. Or, she was hallucinating due to the mercury poisoning she “knew” she would get because of the tuna her mother made her eat. While she internally screamed and tried to figure out what the hell could be going on, the desk chair began to turn around.

“Darby Anne Meyers. Senior. One hundred fifty-seven pounds and two-pointnine-seven ounces in weight. Five feet and five inches in height. Eyes, green.

Hair, brown. On a scale of one to ten, you are an eight.” Principal Quad’s eyes pierced Darby. Darby’s eyes were huge, her palms (and the rest of her body) were sweating profusely, and she was becoming more and more weirded out by the second.

“Uh, yes? That’s me?” Darby almost said this as a question.

“I am merely telling you what I know. Now, the note I sent you; even though you ripped it up and threw it into the trash can with yogurt and pencil shavings, we know you read it.” Principal Quad faced Darby, her dark skin glistening with sweat. Darby became acutely aware of the fact that her principal was wearing what looked like a bandana across her chest. She wasn’t wearing a shirt. While this went completely against the school’s dress code, Darby still couldn’t figure out why Principal Quad was dressed like this.

“Darby, close your mouth. You look like an idiot. Remember the note? We told you we knew you were prepared for the job.”

“What job?!”

“Ah—yes. I need to explain that. Did you notice my secretary’s snake-like features?” Principal Quad peered at Darby through her cat-like eyes, waiting for

57

Darby to figure it out.

“Yeah, she looked kind of like a snake, I guess.”

“Every faculty member at this school is half animal, half human. My secretary is a snake. She takes her human form at work, but when she leaves this school, she is a snake.”

Darby stared at Principal Quad. This lady is crazy. I have been abducted by a bunch of crazy-ass people, I am no longer safe, and I need to get out of here, Darby thought to herself. She could feel an awkward smile stretch across her face, though it did not match the feeling of crippling fear and dread quickly consuming Darby.

“I’m not surprised at your confusion,” Principal Quad sighed. Instead of responding verbally, Darby let out a muffled squeak. She had been slowly sliding down the wall, and at the thought of her teachers secretly being animals, she hit the floor.

“What… What animal are you, Principal Quad?” Darby dared to ask the question. It barely came out of her mouth as a whisper. She was hoping for something tame or small, like a cat or a puppy.

“I am a tiger…but my animal form is constant. What you see is what I want to show you. I see a tiger when I look in the mirror. Allow me to show you my true form,” Principal Quad said softly. Darby sat completely flat on the floor at this point, so overcome with fear, emotions and confusion that she could barely move.

“Oh, no, you really don’t have to do that!” Darby whimpered in fear, sure that she was going to be eaten by her principal tiger.

“It’s too late, it’s already happening…” Principal Quad climbed onto her desk and perched at the front of it, her eyes wide. She was grinning at Darby, but Darby did not return the smile.

“Seriously, please don’t do this! I’m really fine not knowing a thing about the animal teachers, I promise!” Darby squealed her plea with Principal Quad, but she was too late. In the time it took her to blink her eyes, a tiger had appeared before her.

“Oh my God!” Darby jumped up from her spot on the ground. The tiger let out a noise that sounded like a laugh, but Darby knew tigers couldn’t laugh… or could they?

“Darby, my dear, you need to get out more. I’ve never seen someone look so terrified!” Principal Quad laughed again, her long, striped tail flicking around behind her.

Darby couldn’t believe she had gone to school everyday and not noticed that her teachers looked a little odd. A million questions raced through her head, most of them about her teachers.

“All of the teachers here are animals?”

“Yes, every employee of this school is an animal, which brings me back to the

58

mission at hand,” Principal Quad purred. “We have a problem that needs to be tended to, and only you can help, Darby. Some of our teachers have married over the years and they’ve had children. They’re children are also animals, but they’re mutants. A zebra and an ostrich had a baby, and that poor child is covered in feathers and stripes. Remember those middle schoolers you saw earlier today?”

“Wait, were some of them mutant teacher spawn?” Darby was suddenly frustrated that she had paid almost no attention to the students on their field trip.

“Yes, Darby, some of them were ‘mutant teacher spawn,’” Principal Quad smirked at Darby. “Right now, we know we have six confirmed cases of mutant children. They’re practically harmless when they’re in their human form, though I say hardly because teenagers are incredibly lethal. Sometimes, though, when these children turn to their animal forms, they have trouble being themselves because they feel like outcasts.”

“Why do they feel like that?”

“Wouldn’t you feel a little strange if you were a cross between a peacock and a cow?” Principal Quad asked Darby this question as if Darby knew what it felt like to live as a human and animal.

“Uh, sure, I guess that would be weird.” Darby rolled her eyes but quickly regretted it. She was still a little wary of the giant tiger perched on the desk in front of her.

“These children need someone they can look up to, someone who won’t judge them,” Principal Quad said gently.

“Okay, yes, that’s weird, but how do I factor into this? How am I ever going to be able to help?” Darby had taken a few steps away from her safe place near the wall after deciding that Principal Quad probably would’ve eaten her much sooner if she wanted to. Darby had never been someone who jumped for joy at the idea of having an important task, but since her tiger principal needed her help, she felt obligated to do something.

“We think you have what it takes to solve out issue. I know your school life is boring and besides English, you don’t love your classes, but you have the ability to show compassion for others. I just know it, Darby.” Principal Quad looked at Darby with kindness that Darby hadn’t always seen from her superior. Darby was sensitive to the middle schooler’s issue, even if she wasn’t an animal child, and she felt she would be doing them a disservice if she didn’t help.

“Okay, what can I do?”

59

St. Andrews University and Botanical Gardens, Scotland Photographs —Kimberly Rhodes

60

I Cannot Lie to the Moon

—Allison Cooke No matter how fast I drive on forgotten country highways,

it still sees these tears falling

because maybe I’m guilty of realizing too much of myself, of being too quick

to scream at everything

that doesn’t matter.

A truck goes five below speed limit

with nowhere in mind, bands of a late sun stream over every hill, a cut of orange light

sliding behind purple clouded doors, and

the silence of not knowing what to say anymore.

It’s in that moment of breaking into someone’s heart for the first time

and imagining that this is what forever feels like—

a misplaced heartbeat, and a whole summer of breathing in thunderstorms to catch up to.

It’s there that I learn to say I love you and cut myself on this fragile new truth.

Now, all I hold onto is this crushing blue sky

and promise of an opal swinging

between every black pine tree.

And the songs on the radio all blur together

like clouds tumbling in the distance

with heat lightning, inhaling and stretching

a hand so thin, it could stroke my face and say, This—

this is how you begin everything.

61

Untitled Mixed Media —Maya Heard

62

Angela’s Rift

—Conner McCoy As the creature lunges, so, too, do I, catching it bodily in mid-air and grappling it back to the ground. One claw lashes through empty icy air toward my torso but stops before its talons can stab too far into my flesh. I manage to catch it by the wrist before it completes its swing. Still, it has drawn blood, which may be a death sentence in itself if the cut isn’t treated soon. I wince and grit my teeth, wrestling the creature down to its knees and then finally its back, and place my boot on its throat to suffocate it to death. All the while it hisses and writhes, trying to escape, to kill me. It’s the second one this morning. It’s the ninth one this week.

When it’s over, I fall back into the snow, into a sitting position to catch my breath, watching the smoky vapor float through the air as I exhale. I don’t even try to hold back the tears when I trace the cut, feeling to see how deep it is. I run my shaking finger along it, wiping the warm blood away, quietly sobbing and thinking about where to go from here. The cut is manageable. It’s deeper than I would have liked, but I’ve had much worse. I force myself up. I’ve learned by now that you have to keep moving to survive. The raven-wolves (that’s what I call them) I can deal with, but I know bigger things lurk in the forest as well. Far more dangerous things. I’ve seen the destruction they leave behind, and it isn’t pretty.

I walk for a long time. It doesn’t really matter in which direction; they’re all the same. Occasionally I’ll stumble across a long-forgotten hut or a mostly burnedout shelter, and I’ll stay there for the night, but for the most part, the forest is endless, dead trees, all the same sad grey. The sun, when it’s out, is black and generates only enough light to see a few yards in front of me. It’s directly overhead now, but then again, it was directly overhead a few hours ago. At least, I think it was a few hours ago. It’s impossible to tell for certain. In a few more hours the sun could disappear altogether or still be in the same spot.

I just walk and keep on walking. There’s nothing to do, nothing to think. The forest is repetition, tedium. It’s a fight for survival, yes, but mostly it’s a place of crushing loneliness and silence. You can’t even sing in the forest because your voice makes no sound. I used to love singing.

Suddenly I stop. In the distance I can see a kind of light. It doesn’t appear to be firelight, although it is warm. It’s dim. I can barely make it out on the horizon.

It could be another creature, another trap meant to lure me to my doom, but somehow I can’t resist it. It’s so warm and inviting. After weeks in the cold, endless grey of the rift, I can’t help but be drawn in by it. I take off toward it.

As I get closer, I can make it out more. It is not fire, but rather some kind of floating, glowing orb that gives off light similar to a glow stick. More importantly, however, is the fact that beside the glowing orb is a woman, a human woman. I try shouting, screaming at her to get her attention, but, of course, I can’t. And yet, she turns her head to look at me with an expression of surprise, as if she did

63

hear me.

She has short hair and looks ragged, even worse than I do, with small scars all over her face. Her eyes are deeply set in her skull and have huge bags under them. She looks exhausted.

I shout to her again, getting steadily closer.

“Hello?” she asks without making a sound.

I try to reply, to say anything, but before I can, I fall back through the rift.

I gasp and sit up. I’m in my bed, my own bed from home. It’s warm and comfortable. Sunlight streams in through the window—real, golden sunlight—and I can hear birds outside. Shakily, I get out of bed, change, and make my way downstairs. I don’t think about the woman or the forest. It seems so far away now, so long ago, and there’s nothing I can do to get back, not by myself or at will at least. And, honestly, if I never go back, I’ll be happy.

It all started three years ago. I was in my last year of middle school then. I didn’t know what to think when I first fell. I mean, how does a middle-schooler deal with falling through some kind of rift in time and space into a forest of absolute horror? Of course, back then I would only be in the forest for an hour or two at a time, and the creatures that haunt me now were far less numerous.

But still, it wasn’t easy. I thought I was dreaming at first, but as it kept happening, I knew it was real. The cuts, the bruises that I got in the forest didn’t follow me into the real world, but the pain from them did. I tried telling my friends, but they wouldn’t believe me, thought I was joking. Looking back, I guess I don’t blame them. It is hard to swallow. And even now, in high school, I have no one I can talk to about it. How do you prove something like this? It isn’t like I disappear when it happens. My body stays behind when I fall. To everyone around me, I look completely normal. My body keeps functioning like normal, mostly. I remember doing things while in the rift, things in the real world, but it’s like the memories don’t belong to me.

Once, when it first started happening, I fell in the middle of a geometry test.

Everyone said I just looked super focused. And when I got the test back days later, I made a B-, exactly the grade I would have expected to make after not studying. It’s like I’m there but not there. When I get back, people look at me differently and I don’t know why. I can feel their eyes on me, judging me and I have no idea what I did, if anything. Maybe they can smell the rift on me, sense its dread. Maybe it’s just hard to look at everyone knowing that I might get pulled back into the rift at any moment. Maybe it’s my fault.

I never even tried telling my parents. I know they think I’m messed up already.

They won’t say it out loud, of course, but I know they wish I could be more gifted.

My mom talks about her friends’ kids sometimes, telling Dad and me at dinner how they’ve already applied and been accepted to several colleges. She tells us about awards and achievements they’ve earned and how I could too, if I applied

64

myself. She says I’m really quite gifted, that all the tests they made me take as a kid said I would have a high IQ. I heard her talking to my dad once, when they thought I was still asleep one morning, calling it “gentle nudging.”

I hear Mom before I see her. She sings along quietly with the Christian radio station every morning while making us breakfast. I used to sing along with her, even though I don’t really like the songs myself; I just know the lyrics after hearing the same songs over and over for years. But now I just listen. We never really went to church consistently. Even when I was a kid and my mom insisted we go, something always seemed to come up. Stuff like car trouble or having to help a relative move. Sometimes my dad just told us he was too tired after working all week, so we would just eat breakfast together in front of the T.V. and pray for forgiveness.

“Hey, Mom,” I say, taking a seat at the kitchen table. There’s already a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of toast waiting for me.

“Good morning, Angela! You’re up early today. Are you feeling well?”

It’s always strange coming back from the rift. It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen my mother with my own eyes, but she thinks she saw me yesterday. I can’t tell her that what she really saw was just my body, moving on its own, pretending to be me. So I just say, “Good morning, Mom,” instead.

We talk about little things for a while, school, life, music, but quickly run out of things to say. The silence isn’t uncomfortable, but it isn’t pleasant either.

“Whoa-ho, is that Angie, up already?” Dad comes in, pulling on a suit jacket.

“Hey, Dad,” I say through a mouthful of oatmeal, trying to smile, laughing when oatmeal starts dribbling out of the corner of my mouth.

“Well, you seem more chipper than usual. I thought you were never going to stop being such a sad-sack. Welcome back!”

I shrink a little in my seat. I can’t really blame him. It wasn’t really me, but he didn’t know that.

“Oh, yeah…sorry…” I say.

The next few days are pretty much normal. I go to school. I come home. I don’t fall into an alternate dimension. I fail a biology test but I didn’t really expect to pass. Pretend-me didn’t study. I talk to friends, eat lunch with them like normal, but everything feels somehow wrong. But I make an effort to regain normalcy anyways.

It’s about a month after my return that I’m taken again. This time it happens in gym class.

I’m in the locker room before class, putting all my stuff in my locker and changing into gym clothes. A girl walks up to me. Her name is Annabeth. We used to be friends once, in elementary school, but she started hanging out with a group of popular bullies in middle school and I didn’t.

“Hey, Angie,” she says with a kind of mock sweetness. “Can I borrow your

65

biology homework? I, like, completely forgot about it until this morning and I would be super depressed if I got another bad grade in that class.”

“Umm, I guess so… I don’t really want to get in trouble though…”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Brunson doesn’t care. Plus, if your answers are right, then it will just look like we’re both smart! Please? Come on, don’t be a jerk.”

I hate being pressured like this. I hate being thought of as a pushover because I’m nice, or try to be. I know that Mr. Brunson does care and if it turns out that I didn’t get every answer right, which I’m almost certain I did not, then it’ll look really suspicious when we both get all the same wrong answers.

“Whatever. Just get it back to me before biology,” I say. I want to change some answers before I turn it in, just to make sure. I hold out the paper for her.

“Thank you, Angie!” she says.

I turn back to my locker but it’s gone. Where there should have been a cubby with my backpack and purse was a window into the rift. I see the snow falling, the black sun, the raven-wolves at the ready. I look around. Can no one else see it?

Can no one else feel the chill, the terror seeping from it? It sucks me in, silently.

I try pulling away, hanging on to anything I can but everything falls through my fingers like I’m nothing. I reach out desperately, trying to get someone’s attention, but only Annabeth is left in the locker room now. She turns to look at me, raises an eyebrow, rolls her eyes, and walks out.

I wrote a letter to a scientist once, when I spent hours of every day researching the rift and looking for a solution. His name came up a lot because he was a self-proclaimed “riftologist.” He spent his life researching the gateways to other worlds and looking for a way to open them. He often guest-starred on those ghost-hunting shows to explain how ghosts and the supernatural could enter the real world. He seemed like my best bet at the time. I wrote him and told him everything. A month later I got a letter thanking me for my interest in his work.

Most of it was stock text, the kind you send to people you don’t really want to reply to by hand, but at the end he wrote a small message. It read, “Angela, your problem is unusual. Try eating more potassium. My research indicates that a lowpotassium diet often invites the paranormal into one’s life. If that doesn’t work, try travelling. If you live on or near an ancient burial ground, you’re probably dealing with a poltergeist or another vengeful spirit. Best of luck.”

That’s the last time I trust anyone with my secret, I thought.

Now, back in the forever-winter forest of the rift, I look for the woman I saw last time. All around me the snow is fresh. There’s no indication that anyone else ever existed here. The spot where I saw the orb is completely gone, covered in the same snow as everywhere else. I look for a long time before I find anything.

I almost miss it, but on a tree there are a few little cuts. I might normally have taken them as raven-wolf scratch marks, but they’re too bunched together, so I look closer. Three little slashes form an arrow pointing to what appears to be the

66

east, at the time, given the position of the sun. My heartbeat races. Could I have found another person? Could they hold the answer to freedom? I run in the direction of the arrow. Eventually, I find another marked tree. I follow that one’s arrow and keep going for hours. Eventually, I see the orb.

I sprint this time, so that I know I’ll have enough time to talk to the woman, even if I fall back through the rift again. The woman is there, by the orb, just like last time. I call out to her silently. She hears me.

“Hello? Hello?!” She seems as surprised as I am.

“Hello!” I reply, breathlessly.

“Who are you? How did you get here? What’s your name?” I can’t hear her but I know what she’s saying, can understand her.

“I’m Angela… I fell through…through a kind of rift and…”

Her eyebrows raise in surprise. By the orb I can see that she is actually pretty beautiful, in a way. It’s obvious that she cuts her own hair by how jagged and frayed her bangs are, and her face is a mess of stress marks and scars. But her eyes are large and piercingly blue and her features, while rough, could be quite elegant.

“I’m Thea…” she says, still dumbfounded. “You came through the…the rift, you called it? When? How many times? How long?”

I tell her everything. I feel like I can trust her. She’s in the same situation, after all.

“How do you make…that?” I ask after a while, pointing to the glowing orb.

“Oh,” she says, smiling a little, “it’s…difficult to explain. There’s a kind of magic here that makes certain things possible. I can teach you, if you’d like.”

“Yes, please!” I say eagerly. Light and warmth might not sound like much, but in the rift, it could mean the difference between life and death. “But if you can do stuff like that, can you… get out? Of the rift? Surely with your magic we could—” “—No,” she says definitively. “No, I’ve tried. On both ends. It isn’t possible.”

“But—” “Stop. You’ll only give yourself false hope. Look, let me teach you how to do magic. That way you’ll at least be able to survive when things get worse.”

“Worse?”

“Yeah, worse. When you get stuck for months…for years…”

“What?! But…I can’t live here for that long, I’m not strong enough!”

Thea smiles a little. “Yeah you are, kid. I can tell. You remind me a lot of…me.

If we stick together, I know we can get through this, whatever it is.”

“Thanks, Thea… Hey, how long have you been in here, by the way? Just this time?”

She sighs and looks at me, as if she’s sorry to have to be the one to say it.

“Twelve years,” she says.

Twelve years. Twelve years away from her friends and family. I can’t even think how that must hurt her. Sure, her body is there, just like mine, but she tells me

67

anymore. I’ll tell you what she needs: a job, a boyfriend and some damn life lessons.”

“But honey, you can’t deny that she’s been a bit off-and-on lately. I really think she­—” “—she wants attention, honey,” Dad says condescendingly. “It’s what this whole generation wants. Give her some time and space and she’ll realize that the squeaky wheel doesn’t always get coddled. Believe me, honey, my dad raised me right, now I’m going to raise her right.”

“But…” “That’s the end of it.”

I’m not as disappointed as I should be the next day when I fall back into the rift.

Thea’s there. We have light now. I made it this time, with the magic she showed me.

“It took me years to do that, you little punk!” she says, miming a kind of jealous surprise.

I remind her that she didn’t have a teacher and that I have, in fact, been coming to the rift for just over three years now. She shrugs, laughs, and hugs me, telling me how it’s still impressive. Everything is going well. I’m actually having a good time in the rift. Well, I’m not having a terrible time, at least. That is, I wasn’t before a group of raven-wolves and blood-badgers show up. I look at Thea and we both get ready. She’s shaking. She’s been doing this for decades and she still shakes when the demons come. It scares me. There are four creatures altogether: two blood-badgers and two raven-wolves.

One beast rushes me, a badger. I side-step away from it, dancing around it as it swipes at me, bites at my ankles. I throw a few kicks out to keep it at a distance, but it manages to land a few sharp cuts across my legs. I do what Thea taught me and dive onto the creature’s back when it goes in for the kill. It works as expected and I catch it off guard. I get my hands around its neck, hanging on its back while it struggles. I already have the stone in my hand, the one Thea told me to always keep with me for this reason. I slam it into the badger’s head, killing it instantly. I scream when a raven-wolf gets me from behind, slashing my calf when I’m not expecting it. A gush of blood stains the snow beneath me.

I see Thea look over at me. I notice that the demons she fights are considerably larger, more aggressive. The raven-wolf is on me now, claws digging into either bicep. I’m holding its jaw open as it tries to fit my head in its mouth. Blood drips down from my hands onto my face. Thea calls out to me, tells me to hold on. That’s all I can do. I briefly consider letting the raven-wolf go, letting its jaw snap shut. Would I really die? Is this really in my head after all? My body, my real body would be fine, right?

Thea’s boot slams into the raven-wolf’s ribcage with the full force of her body. She’s on it in an instant. It doesn’t stand a chance. I look around. She’s dispatched both the other monsters as well. She’s amazing.

68

“Are you okay?” she asks, panting. She’s covered in blood—hers and the monsters’.

“Yeah… Yeah I am. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Come on, we have to move. The vilewyrm will be here soon.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“It’s attracted by stuff like this. I’ve seen it a couple times after a big attack like this. We have to go, now.”

We run, then, for a long time. I ask Thea how she knows when we’re safe. She doesn’t, she says. Eventually we stop.

“I can’t go on. I’m too tired. We have to stop here,” she says.

“Are you sure? Are we far away enough now?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she sounds resigned. “If it really wants us, it’ll find us. We can’t run forever, and I’m tired.”

Her whole body sags with exhaustion. She collapses into the snow. It’s up to me to conjure the light. Doing so tires me out as well and I fall down next to her. We sit for a while, just listening to the sound of each other breathing. For a second, I’m content, and then, I feel myself falling. The rift pulls at me and I know I’ll disappear soon. I’m telling Thea when I hear something. Something wild.

There isn’t normally sound in the rift, other than Thea’s voice, but now I hear a rumbling sound. Thea smiles, her eyes still closed.

“Thea?” I ask, scared.

“It’s okay, Angie, go on. I’ll be okay. Just, get out of here now. It doesn’t want you yet.”

“Thea?!” I scream. And then I fall.

I’m suddenly in a doctor’s office. My mom is there and a stranger in a lab coat.

Where’s Thea? I have to get back. She’s in danger.

“Angela?” Mom asks, “Are you okay? The doctor asked you a question. Are you having trouble in school? With bullies or teachers or anything?”

“Mom!? I…I can’t talk, I have to go back I have to…” I’m mumbling now, babbling on about Thea, trying to get back. I will the rift to open, try to force it with my mind. The chill is still there, deep, deep inside me, but I can’t open it. I fall to the ground, clutching my head.

“Angie!” my mom screams. She’s beside me in an instant. The doctor runs into the hallway, yelling for equipment and another doctor.

My head feels like it’s splitting as I concentrate with every fiber of my being on the rift. I feel the snow on my skin. It’s wet and cold. I can hear my mom talking to me, hear the ticking of the office clock. But I can see Thea, briefly. Just for a second she flashes into existence. She’s running, chased by an enormous, disgusting creature. It’s the vilewyrm. Its giant, snake-like body plows in and out of the snow, slithering viciously toward her.

“Thea!” I scream. I don’t know if I scream it in the real world or in the rift.

“Angela… Go...g...get out, now!” Thea yells, breathlessly.

69

I shake my head, crying. I can’t just leave her there, but I can’t force myself entirely back into the rift either. At some point during the ordeal, I lose consciousness.

When I wake up, I’m in a hospital bed. My mom is asleep in a chair by the bed.

It’s dark outside, meaning that at least a few hours have passed. I concentrate hard, trying with all my strength to somehow force my way into the rift.

Miraculously, it doesn’t take long for me to succeed. Somehow, I manage to fall through the rift by my own free will.

The rift is just as it normally is, except that huge tracts of snow have been disturbed by the vilewyrm. I follow the trail, running for what must be miles. I don’t see any sign of Thea for a long time. The trail seems to go on forever.

Eventually, I see something in the distance. It’s an orb, glowing dimly on the horizon. I approach it and discover that it’s tucked away in a small cave in a rocky hill. I crawl inside. The orb is exceptionally dim, barely giving off enough light to see the inside of the cave. There’s no sign of Thea, but on the cave wall, drawn with a stone, is a heart with a crown on top. Below that are two words: “Stay strong.”

I cry for a long time.

Mom, Dad and I sit around the kitchen table. Dad is reading the newspaper, Mom is listening to the radio, but isn’t singing along. We go back to the doctor’s today. We’ve been going ever since the accident. They don’t believe me about the rift, of course, but Mom insists I go anyways. I comply, if only to make Mom happy. Dad doesn’t say anything about it, which I guess I appreciate. He’s supportive in his own way.

After that night, I never see Thea again. I like to believe that she escaped, somehow, found her own way out of the rift. I like to think that her message was a “see you later” rather than a goodbye. But the truth is, I may never know for sure.

It makes me sad to think about, but I try not to think about it too often.

As for me, I spent a long time in the rift after Thea’s disappearance. Almost a month. But when I returned, I knew I could do something, change something and escape the rift forever. I had to, for Thea. It took a long time, and several more trips through, but eventually I managed to gain some control over it. Now I spend less and less time in the rift with each fall, and I fall less frequently. I’ve never met another person in there, but I’m looking. I go online every day and scour every obscure corner of the internet I can find, just in case someone out there needs help. Thea saved my life. I owe it to her to save someone else’s.

70

Contributor’s Notes Olivia Aldridge is a senior English major with Creative Writing Emphasis and a Media Studies minor.

Will Baird is a junior Creative Writing major and Media Studies minor.

He exclusively played tennis the first eighteen years of his life, and didn’t accomplish much else. Formerly Pre-Med, he now spends the majority of his time writing about himself, along with things that don’t exist.

Ruth Boggs is a junior double majoring in Psychology and Art. Allison Cooke is a senior English major with minors in Media Studies: Journalism, Art History, and Philosophy. She loves writing and working with poetry and hopes to go to graduate school after taking a break to study poetry even more.

Anna Cooke is a junior double majoring in Business Management and Accounting and double minoring in Economics and Computer Science.

J.T. Davis is a Music and Creative Writing double major. He enjoys writing music, poetry, prose, and drama, as well as performing and reading the same. After college, he plans to follow his calling and enroll in a seminary.

Joshua Eargle a junior Religion major with a concentration in Philosophy.

Upon graduation, he hopes to attend divinity school for his masters in Islamic Studies. He likes to write about the mundane, the common aspects of daily life which are universal across the human experience.

Poetry is God’s possession of his soul.

Sarah Gastright is a freshman who will probably major in Creative Writing and minor in Psychology. She has been writing since she was in third grade and has yet to find a reason to stop. Over the years, it evolved from a simple hobby to what she wanted to do with her life. As long as people enjoy what she writes, she deems herself as successful.

71

Kaitlyn Guinyard is a junior majoring in English with a focus on Creative Writing and double minoring in Art and French.

Maya Heard is an undeclared freshman.

Maggie Holly is a senior English major with minors in French, Psychology, and Women’s and Gender Studies.

Emma Mathews is an English major and History minor with a love of creative writing classes. She enjoys writing about situations in her life that have been embarrassing or traumatizing, but she makes these fictional stories by amping them up with crazy characters and details that wouldn’t happen in everyday life.

Conner McCoy is a senior double majoring in English with Creative Writing Emphasis and History.

Regan Reed is a junior Political Science, French, and History triple major.

Kimberly Rhodes is a senior History major with minors in Art History and English.

Lee-Ann Salim is a junior here at PC all the way from New York.

72